Liminality
by ianthewaiting
Summary: After years as an Auror, Neville Longbottom pulls one last case before moving on to a post at Hogwarts, and it is the end all-be all of cases. Murders, ritual branding, werewolves, cults...and Hermione Granger. Non-canon elements, AU, DH-EWE, character death, slow burn, HG/NL
1. Chapter 1

_After...July 7, 2009, 7:12 PM_

She was beginning to lose everything again (again?), and though it should have frightened her, she was more concerned about something else, something by far more dangerous. She was beginning to forget everything. She could feel it, just as she could feel her blood seeping through the wounds on her body. She was losing all the reasons as to why and how, she was losing her name and her past, and she was, with every drip by slow drip, losing her life.

Her body was battered and broken, and there was considerable pain, but it was nothing in comparison to the fear.

She could not run, stand, or even crawl. Her legs and arms were broken, ribs cracked, body bleeding from numerous shallow wounds—she was effectively crippled. Her state was purposely set so that she could not escape. It was déjà vu, somehow. Even her placement on a high catwalk over a piece of hot and whirring machinery was done purposefully, for below her, lying in between two pieces of moving machinery, was the thing she feared more than her slipping memory.

A patch of sunlight lit the concrete floor, oil and grease stained. Inside this patch of late daylight laid a man, a man she _did_ know. She was losing everything else, but she knew him, his name, his face, and she knew that she had grown to care more for him than anyone. She also knew that she was frightened of him, what was inside him, what he would become as soon as that blissful light that lit his bloody body would fade for night.

The roar of machinery did not wake him from his slumber, and she stared at his wide chest, ignoring the gashes, to see that he was breathing evenly and deeply. He was alive, more so than she was. Surely, her life would end soon enough. She was cognizant, but circling the proverbial drain.

She could not remember how she got to be at this place and time.

She was inside a building, a factory, she could only assume. What kind of factory and where it could be was one of perhaps a thousand bits of information leaking out of her mind along with her life? It was like a New Objectivity nightmare, but she was beginning to forget why she knew this or thought this...

She could not remember her name. She only knew the fear.

Something was going to happen to her when the sunset and the moon rose. Something more terrible that having her limbs broken and her blood spilt was going to happen. He, the man whose chest rose and fell to breathe, was going to do this 'something' to her.

She could not remember her name, but she could remember his, and by his very name, she had to hope that when he opened his eyes, he would remember everything in her place.

* * *

 _Before...June 26, 2006, 3:56 AM_

They say only idiots get summer colds. Personally, she did not know who 'they' were or who said it, but she felt the full meaning of the saying. She was suffering from a cold that nothing, not even magical cures, could knock out of her system.

As it was, the damp of an early morning in North London, and trudging through the wet, did nothing to help ease her malady. Hermione Granger was annoyed, wet, sick, and horribly awake. To add to her misery, she was staring at a sight that would turn most stomachs if she were not convincing herself she was having a dream, or if she could breathe properly through her nose. Surely, if she could breathe in the stench of a smoldering body, she would be vomiting through her nose as well as her mouth.

It was far too early and she knew that she should be in bed.

She was crouching next to what remained of a once living human, only the limbs left virtually unscathed while the rest of the body smoked and sizzled on a concrete floor of an underground parking garage in Kilburn.

"Give me your pen, Harry?" Hermione grumbled in request, not bothering to look at the one reason why she was not in bed convalescing, and reaching out blindly in his direction at her right.

With Harry's fancy Muggle fountain pen in her hand, Hermione's Christmas gift to him from years ago, she used it to push gently at the curled digits of what had once been, and quite obviously by the pink lacquer on the nails, a woman. Rigor had not yet set in, and she wondered if rigor would set in with such a death.

Hermione retched, but began coughing, feeling phlegm rattle in her chest.

"Two wounds on either palm," she said more to herself than to Harry Potter, Head of Magical Law Enforcement. "Practically healed, but burnt into the deep tissue..."

Whatever combination of lethargy and sickness that had kept her distant from her situation was suddenly gone. Hermione knew what she was seeing, but she could not understand why she was seeing it.

She stood, passing Harry his fountain pen and turned away from the body.

The flashing of camera bulbs disoriented Hermione as she looked to the second body twenty feet away. The Forensics team were moving all around the second body, one Auror holding up the Conjured sheet, another taking the documentary photographs, another placing field markers to measure evidence. Once the photographs were done, the Forensics team would begin magically collecting trace evidence for further analysis.

"You can finish now," she heard Harry say to the Forensics team, and soon she was able to crouch down again next to the second body.

The Forensics team had left the sheet pulled back from the face, a face Hermione knew, and wished she did not.

She wanted distance from this place, this situation, if she were to decide to help Harry at all.

"You owe me, Harry, you owe me big..." Hermione whispered as she pulled a tissue from the pocket of her damp Mackintosh and staunched her flowing nose.

Hermione was looking at the beaten and bloodied face of Theodore Nott. However, the cause of death was what puzzled her more than the burnt corpse or the wounds on the hands. Theodore Nott had been shot with a Muggle gun, the entry wound leaving a clean hole in the middle of his forehead while blasting out the back of his skull on exiting. The evidence of such a violent death was splattered over the wall next to the body, a concrete painted wall, marking the basement level of the garage.

"Is this why you called me?" she asked, struggling to stand again, her bones aching.

Harry had been silently watching her all the while, ever since he led her under the police cordon. Hermione noted that the white and red tape was not used by the Aurory, but by the Muggle authorities. So far, Harry had told her almost nothing as to why she should be in a stuffy parking garage in the middle of the night.

Hermione was no forensics expert. She had no experience with crime scene investigation or reconstruction. If it was not for her stuffy head and dulled sense of smell, Hermione was sure she would be violently ill all over Harry's crime scene.

She was a legal advocate and liaison for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Werewolf Support Service, and nothing more, in an official capacity.

"What is this really about, Harry?"

Harry shrugged and tried to flash one of his silly smiles, which, in turn, would make her smile. However, this particular early morning, Harry Potter's charm was wasted upon Hermione Granger. Taking her by the arm, he walked her back toward the cordon, and seeing that she was not smiling, became serious and more like a man as compared to the boy she had known most of her life, so far.

"I thought I said no more favors?" she rasped, feeling a coughing fit beginning to build in her throat.

Harry released her arm and shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark brown trench coat, part of his 'I am the Head of the Aurory' costume, complete with dark suit, buffed shoes, all slightly disheveled, just like his hair.

"If this were not important, I would not have called, Hermione," Harry said gruffly, none too happy, apparently, to bring someone from the outside into an active investigation.

Hermione snorted, however. "Calling? Using your Patronus to 'call' was overkill, Harry. Being awakened by a snorting, glittering stag as large as a small elephant is not a normal way to 'call' a person."

He smiled, albeit sheepishly, Hermione was sure her ragged voice, her pallor, and bedraggled appearance only made her physical expression of annoyance quite comical. She did not want to know what her hair looked like at that moment.

However, under her annoyance and horror at the death around her, there was something akin to fear filling a vacuum in her belly. She could not tell Harry that she had known the address of the parking garage even before his stag Patronus had burst into her bedroom, causing her to throw her hot water bottle at it in a weak attempt of self-defense.

"Besides, I thought it was an emergency," she continued. "You could have been a bit more informative with the Patronus—besides the address and 'please hurry.' I thought Ginny was going into labor..."

Harry paled. Ginny was eight months pregnant with their third child, the first Potter girl.

It had been agreed upon long ago, though Harry had obviously forgotten, that Patronuses were only to be used for dire emergencies. Just like Harry, his stag Patronus was larger than life, and damn frightening, she thought, at three in the morning, doped up on Muggle cold medicine. She made a mental note to attempt to mend her old water bottle when she returned to her flat.

"What is this about?" Hermione asked again, this time in a hiss, peering back at the movement of the Forensics team, collecting evidence from around the burnt body.

She wanted Harry to tell her why she was indulging him with another favor. She had done too many favors for Harry, and by extension, Ginny, ever since they asked her to be godmother to James.

Hermione knew why Harry felt he could ask anything of her—it was his way of trying to keep her included.

"I needed your particular expertise on this one, Hermione," he said, his voice taking on a graver, more adult quality. "Your expertise as part of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

Hermione cringed automatically. To be honest, she thought, the Department needed an overhaul, beginning with its name.

"And you have requested my assistance with this investigation?"

Harry glanced away and toward the cordon of police tape, Metropolitan Police Service cordoning tape, she noted.

"Not yet," he sighed. "It will be done in the morning..."

How sly, Hermione wanted to say. Old Scamander as they called him, Theseus Scamander, Newt's son, would never let the Aurory appropriate her services, no matter if the Minister himself were to send down the decree. Her department Head shielded her, she was protected by her rank in the department, and by people she cared for and cared for her. Harry should have been one of those people, he was one of those people, but Hermione knew, standing in her dripping Mackintosh, that the need for her particular assistance was far more imperative than considering her personal feelings...

Harry would never ask her to work with the Aurory again, unless it was for something extremely important.

He seemed to be thinking about this even as they stared at each other.

She sighed. "You asked me to look, I looked. Now tell me what I need to know now so I can give you whatever information you think I might have. You know that your request will be refused..."

Harry nodded and glanced around as if looking for something. Hermione paid little mind, but waited.

"Last month, a contact in the Met called us to a scene in New Cross. The crime scene was nearly identical to this..." Harry said, nodding his head back to the bodies behind Hermione. "The contact detected a magical residue on the burn victim and contacted the Aurory."

Hermione licked her chapped lips, nervously. "The autopsy findings of the first victims?"

Harry shuffled, and she knew what he was thinking. Nothing was official yet, at least, where she was concerned. Whatever information Harry had, he legally could not divulge until Hermione's signature was on parchment and her addition to the investigation was on record.

However...

"The burn victim was cursed to burn from the inside out, the body fat was melted, the organs, only the limbs remained intact. Whoever cast the curse did not care if we were able to identify the remains."

There was, typically, no body fat in the extremities, she knew. In cases of supposed spontaneous combustion, limbs were charred, but not burned. Of course, the smoldering body behind her near a concrete pillar had not combusted spontaneously...

"And the second was shot?"

Harry nodded, pulling a hand from his coat pocket to scratch the back of his head. This gesture made Hermione nervous. Harry was the Head of the Aurory, and yet, he was concerned. For Harry to be concerned and to call for Hermione meant only one thing: this was a serious situation.

Then there was the fact that Theodore Nott, a former schoolmate, was lying on the filthy floor of the parking garage with the back of his skull splattered on the wall.

Gods, she hoped she could keep herself together...

She could not remember the last time she had seen Theo Nott, at least, not in the past ten years, but Hermione had heard plenty of rumors. The last rumor had been that he had lost his fortune to gambling debts and was on the verge of losing the Nott Lodge in Cheshire. Before this rumor, she had heard he had been engaged to Daphne Greengrass... Hermione never was one to keep up with rumors, but she heard them all the same.

Had he been the one to send the letter? Now, Theo Nott was dead and Harry was concerned.

As if answering her next question before she could form it on her tongue, Harry said: "The first two victims were American tourists, recent graduates from Ilvermorny here on a walking tour. They were reported missing north of Manchester, their bodies found in New Cross two months later."

Wizards, albeit American, but wizards...

"The circumstances are virtually the same," Harry continued, "the condition of the bodies, the markings on the burn victim's palms..."

"And why bring me in, exactly?" she interrupted.

Harry shifted on his buffed leather shoes again, and she knew, before he was about to say it, that she would not like his answer.

"Trace evidence and the autopsies, if this is the same as before, will reveal that the unidentified female and Nott were infected."

'Infected,' it was the current politically correct term for 'bitten by a werewolf.' It was strange how one vocabulary had been replaced by another, just as Ministers for Magic were replaced.

"Infected..." Hermione repeated, and she felt her head begin to pound. The letter had said...

Harry's hand moved from scratching the back of his head to rest on her shoulder. Hermione had swayed on her feet without realizing it.

"I told you..." he whispered, leaning toward her to let his lips brush the shell of her ear. "If this was not important..."

"I am not doing this," she gasped, the sound of her voice startling her. She sounded old, ill, and angry. It was as if her words and the tone in which they were uttered betrayed some inner truth about herself. She would not do this; she would not play this game again.

Hermione pulled away a little too briskly, and began coughing. She had managed to stave off the coughing as long as she could, but her physical state gave her distance from she knew Harry was implying.

Her coughing brought several sets of eyes toward her direction, and for the first time since her arrival, Hermione wondered why Harry, of all people, was at this particular crime scene. As far as she knew, as Head, Harry had complete freedom to involve himself in any case he wanted. Why this case? Why now when he could be home with Ginny and the boys?

Perhaps if she had come when she was asked, Theo Nott, possibly a werewolf, would not be missing half his skull and the unfortunate woman with the branded palms would not have died a terrible death...

She had to tell Harry. She had to tell someone...

She dabbed at her nose and tried to breathe normally as Harry sighed and pulled a large, clean handkerchief from his coat pocket. Offering it to her, his emerald eyes scanned her face then her body. He frowned, apparently finding Hermione's appearance to be less than desirable. She knew he was looking for some sign that she was going to refuse his favor, whatever the specifics might be.

Yes, he would be sending the appropriate paperwork to ask for her consulting services to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and yes, old Scamander would read over them. She knew that in the morning Theseus would call her into his office and tell her that it was her choice whether or not she would refuse another request for her consulting services.

In her curiosity and repressed fear, she had allowed Harry to divulge sensitive information regarding an open investigation. She had affectively signed and sealed the request contract by merely listening to Harry speak.

Hermione had to know, of course, she had to know why the symbol for the process of purification was branded into the palms of two supposed victims. She also had to know why an anonymous letter was sent to her earlier that day, using simple, pleading words that she come to Kilburn.

A dread gripped her as suddenly as her coughing fit, and for several moments, camera bulbs flashing away, Hermione could breathe through her nose. Her eyes closed as her senses reoriented themselves, and she could feel the humid air in the stuffy garage, smell it. The scent of urine, cigarette smoke, automobile exhaust, and burnt motor oil inundated her nose. There was something else however, and Hermione smelled it for just a moment before her sinuses closed again and she could not properly inhale through her nose.

"Do you smell that?" she asked, opening her eyes. Suddenly, the dread and the annoyance she had felt was gone, along with her sense of smell.

Harry inhaled sharply through his nose before making a terrible face. "Piss?"

She shook her head and tried to inhale again. It was useless, as there seemed to be a pressure seal set in her nose, mucus blocking her sinuses from functioning properly, but her brain had equated the scent with a word.

"Dirt?" Hermione asked with a nasally voice, raising Harry's handkerchief to her nose.

Harry lifted his chin to sniff the air, frowning. "Something like it... I did not really notice before."

It was probably nothing, but the scent, what little Hermione had taken in through her nose, sparked the recollection of a memory. This memory was lost just as it was forming, and Hermione went about trying to blow her nose discreetly with little success.

Harry shrugged and began speaking about reports being sent to her office, requests and waivers that needed her signature, as if she had agreed in totality that she would assist him in this investigation.

"Longbottom will be by your office sometime tomorrow, I am sure..."

Hermione blinked in confusion. "Longbottom?"

How long had it been since she had heard that name?

"He's leading the investigation, I am just here because he called me, and, in turn, I called you. The circumstances of the sce—"

"Longbottom, as in, Neville Longbottom?" she asked, interrupting again, her voice nasal as she was still pinching her nose in Harry's handkerchief.

Harry inhaled sharply and shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat again. The unease that marked his face was unsettling to Hermione.

"The same... Is that going to be a problem?"

Problem? Of course not, she thought. She supposed she was just surprised. Hermione knew Neville had become an Auror, following in his parents' footsteps, but she simply had not heard the name or saw the man's face in years. Not since...

"He's questioning a security guard a few levels above. I think he was also trying to get whatever security footage there might be, but this garage is..."

Harry did not finish. This garage was a den of filth and a lure for criminal activity. In fact, the few automobiles in the garage were not what she would consider high-end vehicles. There was graffiti spray painted on some of the walls and broken glass from ale bottles strewn across the concrete floor. If it were not for the fact the basement level was filled with Aurors and lit by flashbulbs and wand tips, Hermione would never allow herself be drawn to such a dark and foreboding place, yet she had come, and not just due to Harry's adamant request.

This garage was such a location where a few dead bodies would not be out of place. Whatever had happened, this garage was chosen for its darkness, its privacy, and its seclusion from the streets above. Had she been wise to ignore the anonymous letter after all?

"This is a hell of a way to retire," Harry muttered.

Ah yes, she had heard that rumor, just as she had heard rumors about Theo Nott. Neville Longbottom, after ten years of service, was going to retire early, and replace Pomona Sprout as the Herbology Professor. Neville had the proper certifications, Hermione remembered, but opted to work for Magical Law Enforcement. Ron had told her once how proud Neville's grandmother had been when Neville passed easily through Auror training along side Harry and himself...

"I'm going," Hermione announced, more to herself than to Harry.

If she were to be of any use in the morning, she needed to get as much rest as she could. She knew she was going to be miserable regardless. Summer colds...

"Let me walk you up."

Hermione shook her head, as there was no need. The anti-Apparition wards that protected the crime scene ended just at the entrance of the garage and from there she could easily find a dark corner to pop home. Besides, Hermione began noticing that several of the Aurors and members of the Forensics team were eyeing her suspiciously. She knew most of them, of course, but names were lost in her groggy brain, but she knew that they knew who she was.

As she stepped into the narrow stairwell, making sure not to touch the railings, but grasped her wand in the pocket of her Mackintosh, Hermione realized she had not actually agreed to do anything for Harry.

She supposed, in actuality, she was doing a favor for Neville Longbottom, but she did not know all the facts yet. All Hermione did know was that there were striking similarities to the exact reasons why she never wanted to work with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement again, and a reason why she should refuse the official request in the morning. There was also the issue of the anonymous letter still in her office drawer, written in unremarkable blue biro ink.

To be honest, she thought, she should not have even looked at the bodies. Hermione should have told Harry that she could not help him, no matter if it might, eventually, involve her department. If werewolves were involved, she was involved by the nature of her work. All the same, Hermione wanted to control her level of involvement, and coming at Harry's summons before the proper documents were signed, was a mistake. She could never accuse Harry of being as manipulative as to call her to Kilburn and show her a crime scene just to 'involve' her in some way.

No, Harry was concerned; Hermione could see it clearly, even through her cold and dulled senses.

She trudged up the stairs, ascending the three levels to the street entrance. With her lungs burning, her head pounding, Hermione managed to finally reach the last landing and reach for the door handle to exit the stairwell. However, just as she touched the metal handle, the door opened with such a force, and with her senses dulled, the edge caught her in the forehead, just between the eyes, before she could manage to move out of the way.

Hermione saw stars. She stumbled back, her nose feeling as if the pressure seal had suddenly burst, her hands flew to her face, handkerchief between her fingers. She fell back against the railing of the landing, her jaw locked in bone jarring agony.

"Merlin!"

She could not open her eyes for a moment, but when she did, it was to find that someone was standing over her. She had crumpled to her knees at some point, trying her best not to cry out. Hands grabbed Hermione's upper arms, jerking at her Mackintosh roughly, and with no effort at all, she was placed on her feet.

"Are you all right?"

Opening her eyes, blazes of red and orange still flying across her vision, Hermione found she was standing a head and half shorter than a man with a shadowed face.

Hermione's summer cold, which had lasted for over a week, had prevented her from breathing properly. For a week, she had felt as if her head were a tank of pressurized bile, water, and blood. No potions or Muggle curatives had any affect, but as she stood, eyes watering from pain, Hermione could breathe. She smelled tobacco or maybe hashish smoke and a trace of mint. Granted, the headache that was building from the edge of a metal door impacting her skull was painful, but the ability to breathe properly was a boon.

"I..." she began, pulling Harry's handkerchief from her nose, expecting to see blood. "I think so..."

Hermione's nose was not bleeding, neither was her head.

"Excuse me, I am very sorry, but may I pass?"

Hermione exhaled, realizing that the landing before the door was very narrow and that this man, who had nearly knocked her unconscious, was bending down to collect a pile of video cassette tapes that had been dropped in the collision of her body blocking the opening of the door. Hermione had not heard the clatter of plastic, but until the door hit her, her senses _had_ been impaired.

The man, whose black trench coat was strangely dusty and ragged, collected the last tape, and they moved in tandem, he behind the opening door and Hermione through it. Dazed as she was, she did not manage to see his face as he began down the stairs, calling up to apologize again.

By the time she returned to her home, far, far away from North London, she realized who it was that had given her a slight concussion.

Hermione found it humorously ironic.

* * *

Billions and billions of stars and as many miles, the universe in its vastness did not frighten her, in fact, as she lay in her bed just at the edge of dreaming, a part of her ached to see and to know the macrocosm. Perhaps it was because she found her attachment by gravity to a single world so painful, or perhaps it was because she did love the Earth so much that only ever thinking about the vastness of the universe soothed her into a restful sleep.

In her dreams, she struggled to find contentment in feeling her magic swirl through her body—her soul. It should have been a comfort to know that there was something inside her sense of self that was unexplainable, made of star stuff, connecting her to all things. It was only in waking did the tedium of life and the horrors of her eventual dreams force her so far away from the mystery that was the cosmos. It was in waking that the emptiness and loss of control made her think that being a witch was more a complication than a blessing.

Hermione Granger's question of self-purpose was so clear in comparison to the universe, but in comparison to all other things, small and trivial, she had no idea what to imagine as her raison d'etre. She lived, but had not felt lively in years. She lived, but she had no life. So much had been taken from her, and finding something to replace it had been difficult.

Hermione moved in silence through her days, feeling too much or not at all. The waking world was more a dream to her, and after so long, she accepted that perhaps it was so.

Theseus Scamander, aged ninety-odd years, refused to see Hermione the next morning, but shoved the thick packet of parchment under his office door with his signature clearly penned in the appropriate places. Hermione saw it was a facsimile of documents already filed with the Department of Records, and she stopped herself from using a Blasting Hex to get through the Department Head's door to throttle the old codger.

Theseus Scamander, son of Newt, in general, was a very likable Department Head. However, there were times when Old Scamander seemed to break from his generally kind and warm mien to become the grouchiest bastard one could ever meet. In the years Hermione worked in the department, she knew that Old Scamander was usually the worst when the Ministry interfered in some way with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Apparently, the request sent by the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had done more than ruffle Scamander's feathers.

Hermione had come into the Ministry especially early, getting only an hour and half of sleep, in hope of intercepting the forms she expected Harry to send to Scamander. She had hoped to speak to Scamander first, but Harry was not wasting any time.

Picking up the packet, Hermione sniffled, and sighed as she stared at the tarnished plaque on Scamander's door—the surname having not changed in several generations. Scamander was angry, and the answer as to why surely had to do with what was in the packet in her hands.

Moving down the narrow corridor of the fourth level Beast Division, Hermione entered her small office and groaned as she sat down in her rickety office chair, her headache making any change in her head's elevation painful. She closed her eyes for a few moments, still holding the packet in her hands, and waited for the tinging of misfiring neurons to pass.

It was six in the morning, and she did not have any appointments until ten, but with the forms in her hands, she wondered if she would have to cancel everything for the day. It was time to know, she decided, and opened her eyes to begin scanning the forms after opening the bowed ribbon holding the packet together.

Technically, she found, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement could conscript any Ministry employee to work with their department due to an obscure loophole in Ministry code. Hermione knew about it, of course, but to see it being used in her case was, simply, over the top. Hermione began grinding her teeth as she scanned the later pages. She would be conscripted for an indefinite amount of time, but would be compensated for any lost wages. Her official title was 'consultant.'

Dropping the forms to the desktop, Hermione sat back in her office chair and between rubbing her temples with chapped and dry fingers. She eyed her locked office drawer, feeling nauseous.

The owl had come the day before just as she was donning a cloak to go to lunch in Diagon Alley. The owl was unremarkable, a small brown barn owl, generic, she would say. The letter the owl had dropped on her immaculately tidy desk had been the same, unremarkable. However, the contents of the envelope were anything but...

 _'Ms. Granger,'_ the letter had begun, _'it would behoove you to be present at a meeting at six PM...'_ The address was for a car park in Kilburn.

The letter had been a thinly veiled threat, unsigned, and written on a plain piece of unruled white paper. To be at a certain place, at a certain time, or something unfortunate would occur.

Hermione was used to anonymous threats, death threats included, ever since the Tri-Wizard Tournament so many years before. Even after a decade, a week did not go by that some sort of anonymous written threat would find her. This had been especially true since she began working with the 'infected.'

It did not matter that the War was over, very little was learned in terms of tolerance. And very little had been gained in treating lycanthropy either, as far as she knew… Oh, there were the usual grifters who sold poorly crafted Wolfsbane, and unscrupulous potioneers who had been caught using poisoned ingredients. No matter what sort of world they lived in, no matter how progressive, werewolves were the pariahs of the Wizarding world.

How Hermione found herself as special liaison to the werewolf community was convoluted, but it had started not long after the War. Shaklebolt had reopened the Werewolf Support Services when so many people began coming forward after Voldemort, and eventually, Fenrir Greyback's demise—Greyback was given the Kiss after a very fast trial. Lavender Brown had been the most prolific victim who had survived a Greyback attack, and had pushed very hard that the Werewolf Support Services be reinstated. Ten years on, however, Hermione found that the 'support' part really came when the 'infected' were detained for suspicion of trespassing or worse. Hermione was the legal advocate in many cases. And when she was not advocating, she was helping find work for the afflicted when it came out they were 'infected' and patrons to businesses demanded the removal of the 'infected.' There were plenty of those who were sympathetic, especially after the editorials in the Prophet about Remus Lupin and his sacrifices, but there were far more who hated werewolves for simply being…

She did not want to walk down those old paths again and turned her attention to the packet. Hermione sniffled over the papers, rereading the papers before taking her pen from her desk drawer and signing. At the last signature, Hermione stacked up the pages, and sighed as the ribbon holding the packet together tied itself back together, glowing momentarily before popping out of view and most likely back to the Department of Records. Hermione was alone with little to do in her small office with its enchanted window and she sighed, sitting back in her rickety chair.

She supposed it would only be a matter of time before she was summoned and/or accosted by someone in the Aurory. The ten o'clock appointment would not be canceled, but either way, she would have to wait, and it galled her.

Luckily, it was not a long wait.

* * *

 _Author's Note: I started writing this fic in 2009 and it has sat on a hard drive until recently. That said, I should note that during my long fanfic hiatus I was not aware that Lavender Brown did not survive Greyback's attack in canon. Well, damn. So, for the intents of this fic, Lavender Brown managed to survive._  
 _~_^_


	2. Chapter 2

Neville Longbottom's office door was open only a few inches, and Hermione could smell the odor of what was unmistakably a mix of hashish and something else Hermione could not quite identify. She paused in the corridor on the second level, glancing up and down the space to see if anyone else found the odor alarming.

No one seemed to be bothered by the smell and there were about half a dozen staff and Aurors moving along the corridor. They eyed her; naturally, Hermione was not often on the second level. She sighed, and counted herself somewhat fortunate that her sinuses were not so decongested that she could smell much of the smoke coming from the office before her. She lifted a fist to knock on the jamb, but apparently sensing her on the threshold; Neville Longbottom opened the door and stared down at Hermione.

At once he wandlessly Vanished a brown, hand wrapped cigarette between his long fingers and studied her in her black Ministry robes, as if he seeing her for the first time. Well, Hermione thought, perhaps the first time in years had he not nearly knocked her down a flight of stairs, broken her nose, and concussed her only a few hours before in a Muggle car park. She had managed to heal the bruise that had popped up and blackened her eyes. Her face was still probably a little puffy, and her hair, as if its own magical creature, reflected her lingering summer cold—disheveled mess of tawny curls.

"Her-Hermione," he stuttered, and Hermione lifted her chin slight, tightening her mouth.

He was grown up, she thought, handsome and only a vague resemblance to the boy she remembered. The stutter was the same, though.

"Come in," he said, blinking at her and moving aside, motioning for her to come in.

The office was twice as big as hers with two large windows overlooking the Thames. The walls had wonderful dark paneling and the floors were polished dark parquet. There was a lovely red marble fireplace with a sofa before it, albeit covered with a drop cloth. There was a desk near a window across from the door, tidy as basically everything in the office was in packing boxes.

Neville closed the office door and motioned for Hermione to sit before the desk in a worn leather office chair. Neville moved through the space, his red Auror's robes moving like a crimson wave behind him as he Summoned his wand and cast several freshening Charms in the room. Hermione waited, hands folded in her lap as Neville eased himself, stiffly, she noted, down into the chair behind the desk.

"Thanks for coming, and I am so sorry about l-last night. It was late and I was…" he trailed, color tinging his clean shaven cheeks.

Hermione nodded, and watched Neville's eyes seem to flicker, as if hesitating, and then remembering who he was… He sat up straighter, and his expression turned serious.

"This is my last case," he began, "and it seems to be appropriately difficult."

Hermione nodded.

"And I'm sure Harry only told you enough to get you to sign on…?"

Hermione nodded again, realizing that she had yet to say a word. Neville's expression, if anything, seemed to turn darker.

"We need to know who might be infecting people; we need your expertise in this. As you are well aware, the werewolf community will not entertain the notion of working with the MLE, but I know you have successfully petitioned for the expansion of werewolf rights, and even successfully defended…"

Hermione swallowed. "You want me to tell you who are 'infected' and who are not."

Neville frowned, leaning forward to shrug out of his robes so they fell back onto his chair, revealing, surprisingly, a simple black t-shirt, tight fitting, over a pair of plain denims. His hair was loose, she realized as the tresses fell about his wide shoulders in waves of russet brown. She cleared her throat as he rested his elbows on the desktop, his arms brown and thick with muscle.

"Not necessarily, but you have intimate knowledge of who might be responsible. You have connections that the Aurory could only wish to have. And you have a better understanding of the community than we do…"

"We, as in, Harry…?"

Neville nodded slowly, steepling his fingers before him, watching Hermione over his knuckles.

"You are aware that there are certain dynamics within the community that I will not compromise."

Neville nodded again and slowly let his arms fall back to the desk.

"We know that Theo Nott was infected, the Muggle who was burned also infected, and we want to know who and why. It is as simple as that."

Hermione frowned, moving to rest her elbows on the arms of the chair, crossing her ankles.

"It isn't as simple as that, though," she said softly.

"Explain it to me?" he asked with a sigh, and so Hermione tried.

Even before Hermione knew that Remus Lupin was a werewolf in Third Year, the werewolf population was only in the hundreds in Britain, and it was dominated by one pack. No, they did not like non-werewolves to call it a 'pack,' but preferred to use what they considered a less negatively associated word 'clans.' All the same, the familial/communal groups were packs, led by a leader, an alpha. Fenrir Greyback's pack was by far the largest and most prolific, but there were other smaller packs that remained well away from the Death Eaters and Voldemort. These smaller packs had a longer history than Greyback's 'clan of rogues', and were typically familial groups that intermarried through the centuries, keeping their affliction contained. However, there were accidents, there were attacks, and there were retaliations. The packs had to expand to avoid inbreeding, but the packs had their own codes to only 'turn' as a means of survival. The attacks and retaliations came from rogue packs like Greyback's.

Packs consisted of bitten and even alternately afflicted persons, e.g. scratched or bitten during what the packs called 'phase time.' It was believed that werewolves could not be born, but made. Hermione found that this was not always true. Some werewolves were born. It was a secret, one that even old Newt Scamander hid when he learned it almost a hundred years before. Reason: if the Wizarding world knew that werewolves could be born, there would be nothing to prevent genocide except human decency, and Hermione knew that human decency could come at a premium, she had seen it.

During Voldemort, Greyback's pack ruled the community, and those that did not join Greyback and Voldemort were killed. Not all packs, obviously, but several fell in the twenty or so years of Voldemort's rise, fall, and rise again. After Shaklebolt reached out to reestablish the Ministry, after Greyback's Kiss, the packs slowly came out of the shadows, hopeful but cautious.

All the same, Hermione was no expert on the packs. She knew only what they wanted her to know, but she had vowed to help any pack that needed her support, no matter if the packs were at odds, which happened, she found, consistently for centuries. Part of her support was to help those newly afflicted after the War to find places within packs, to find them a support structure if the packs had not already taken those afflicted in. Truth be told, the packs did not need her at all…unless they had issues with the Ministry and then the packs wanted to be called 'clans' and use what little legal standing they had in being considered something more than the idea of a 'feral pack of fleabags'.

The Ministry had tried to register werewolves many times, failing. The Ministry had tried to classify the packs as 'Beasts' rather than 'Beings' and some of Hermione's work dealt with battling this reclassification. Her office had many enemies, in a manner of speaking. Simply, werewolves and similarly afflicted were the lowest of the low in the Wizarding world, and it had very much to do with how humanity viewed its own animalistic tendencies. Werewolves, the packs, Hermione found, were more human and just than most humans could be…

Hermione had some experience feeling like she did not belong, but she kept that feeling, and that knowledge pushed down deep in herself. It would not serve her…

When she concluded explaining the basics of the werewolf community, she felt her sinuses begin to clog again. "The most I can do is ask around, Neville. The packs/clans have a shaky truce to not attack Wizards or Muggles at this time."

Neville's left brow arched. "…at this time?"

Hermione looked down at her hands. "There is a code, call it a 'code of honor' that those who are bitten are taken care of…even Remus Lupin was cared for by a pack when he was a child. To simply turn someone and then kill them…"

"Do you think it could be someone with a grudge against werewolves?"

Hermione blinked and then looked to Neville's handsome face, surprised at her own shallow estimation of the boy she once knew. "Possibly, but I have never…" she began and considered her next words carefully. "…never known of the anti-werewolf groups to do anything more than harass the packs. The packs are secretive; they don't advertise who they are to outsiders…"

The anti-werewolf groups, two only, were made up of two factions—older Pureblood non-Death Eaters, and oddly, a group of Hufflepuffs who were several years ahead of Hermione and Neville.

"The scarring…" Neville trailed. "You saw it?"

Hermione blinked, hesitating, and then realizing what Neville meant, nodded. "The alchemical symbol for 'purity,' yes. That is why you might think it is someone with a grudge?"

"Maybe, but it doesn't explain the burnt body or the gunshot wound that killed Theo Nott."

"That was his official cause of death?" Hermione asked and Neville nodded, moving to open a drawer in his desk, pulling out a file folder and passing it over the desk to Hermione.

"Came to me an hour ago."

Hermione sniffed, estimating the Healers, nay Coroners had been working through the night. She winced, hating that the congestion began to build again behind her eyes. She flipped the file folder open and found the Ministry Coroner's initial post-mortem report. Theo Nott was 'infected,' only recently. The scarring on the hands occurred before death, and the gunshot wound killed Theo Nott…a silver bullet coated in dittany. It was a 9 millimeter bullet, which meant next to nothing to Hermione, but it was clear the bullet was custom made. A silver bullet coated in dittany would have blazed a hole through Theo Nott's brain, preventing any natural healing as werewolves did have some accelerated healing ability…but not enough to heal a bullet to the between the eyes no matter if it was silver coated in dittany. Whoever shot Theo Nott wanted to be sure he would surely be dead.

As for the Muggle, Jane Doe, tests concluded she had been bitten, but there was mounting evidence that the affliction had killed her. Hermione had never heard of werewolves suddenly catching fire, however. Muggles usually did not survive a bite, or if they did, they would not survive their 'moon time.' There was still some mystery to lycanthropy that not even the packs knew—why was it witches and wizards who could be turned?

"And the two Americans?" Hermione ventured, and Neville smirked, pulling another folder from the still open drawer, anticipating Hermione.

Two Americans, a witch and a wizard, recently Ilvermorny grads were on a walking tour. Both were listed as missing by their parents after failing to check in after a week, only to reappear dead and bitten two months later. Hermione read that it was clear that they had survived two cycles before being killed…one shot in the head with a silver bullet coated in dittany, brands on their palms, the female burnt. Timothy Davenport and Chloe Williams, school sweethearts, both nineteen—Williams had been only three months pregnant. Hermione tried not to let her face betray her surprise and dismay, and kept reading.

There was no real forensic evidence of a perpetrator, the place in which the victims were found had no obvious significance, but all were found on the night of a new moon. The only anomalous bit of evidence was the collection of hair found on Theo Nott and Timothy Davenport—hair, black animal hair. It was not werewolf hair, it was not dog hair, and in fact the Ministry's labs could not identify the hair other than to discern that it was not artificial. Hermione stored that bit of information away to consider later.

But Hermione's eyes widened at the final autopsy of the Americans. Although it was a new moon, the coroner determined that both had shifted prior to death. Both bodies were found nude, lying side by side; face down, bullet entry in the back of Davenport's head, and Williams burnt.

"Who turned them, and why?" Neville asked, more to himself than to Hermione who closed the file folders and passed them back to Neville. "You mentioned rogue packs."

Hermione shifted in her chair and frowned. "Not since Greyback, not that I am aware of. It is possible, but improbable. It just isn't how the packs work, but then again, I only know what they tell me."

Neville sat back in his chair and cocked his head at this. "Who tells you, exactly?"

"The report on the Americans has to be wrong," she said, not answering. "It is impossible."

Neville's lips twitched. "Another reason why you were called."

Hermione closed her eyes and covered her eyes with her hands, then pressing on the orbital socket of her eyes, trying to relieve some of the pressure, she groaned softly. "What is it you want, _exactly_?"

"An in," Neville said without hesitation. "So far much of the circumstances have been left out of the press, but with another murder, this time with a British wizard, the Prophet may not be so easily persuaded to leave certain details out."

She licked her lips; she could see the logic of it. No press about the werewolf community, no matter how small, was good press. The packs did not want unwanted attention, especially if four people, so far, were infected and then murdered. Questions as to why they were turned would overrule the question as to why they were murdered.

"I want to keep this quiet, but so far, I know almost nothing…"

Hermione cut her eyes to the grain of the wood of Neville's desk, considering. "An in, huh?" she whispered.

She was not sure what that really might mean, ultimately. Hermione was not an Auror, and though she had had some training when she first began working with the Ministry, she was not an investigator in the traditional sense. Hermione was a legal advocate…

Speaking of, she drew her wand and did a basic Charm to tell her the time. It was 8 in the morning.

"Do you have something…?" Neville asked, a slight smirk on his lips.

Hermione said nothing, but looked to Neville's face again.

"You're retiring from the Aurory."

His expression went stony, and his hazel eyes pierced hers. "Yes."

"It's been almost ten years," Hermione whispered, feeling her nose begin to drip. She drew a handkerchief from her robes and began dabbing at her nose. "You didn't recognize me last night."

It was a statement, and Hermione saw Neville's face set, his thick arms crossing before his wide chest. Neville was taller than Ron had ever been; it was only a few inches though. Neville had been a tubby child, but as a grown man, he was solid muscle and sturdy bone. Ron had been just as sturdy, but his eyes were not hard, not like Neville's. The longer she looked at Neville Longbottom, the more Hermione knew that she really did not know him at all. There was a surface congeniality, they _were_ old classmates and allies, but ten long years had passed, and it was plenty of time to change a person.

It had changed her.

"Can I ask you something, something that might be personal?" Neville asked, his arms relaxing to rest on the arms of his chair.

Hermione nodded, feeling a coughing fit coming on and lifted her handkerchief before her mouth.

"Why did you stay? Why did you remain involved after what happened to Ron?"

He had meant Scamander's department, and specifically Werewolf Support Services, she knew.

"Were you bitten?"

Her eyes snapped to his even as she began a prolonged, very bone rattling coughing spell. When it did not pass immediately, Neville rose, moving to a small table near the door where there was a tray with bottled water and glasses. Hermione watched him pour cool water into a tumbler, his back to her. He cut an imposing, attractive figure in the t-shirt and denims, a pair of old boots adding a bit of informality about his image.

Passing the glass to her, Hermione took it, knowing it probably would not help soothe her throat. There was just too much mucus moving around. However, she found that it was not simply water, but a cool concoction of mint and lime. She had forgotten in her state of illness that it was summer, after all. And though she was just comfortable in her heavy Ministry robes, Neville was healthy and it was warm in his office.

"No," she answered finally, resting the tumbler on her knee as Neville sat back down behind his desk. "I was not bitten."

Neville nodded. "But you were there, you were the one…" he trailed, his eyes growing distant, moving to the enchanted window. He did not want to say it, and Hermione wondered why.

Neville had joined up the same time as Harry and Ron, but he was assigned to bring in the last of the Lestranges and ended up in the far North. Harry was still on honeymoon when Ron and Hermione were following a lead from a rival pack that Greyback was hiding out in Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean. Hermione had met with an Alpha whose territory Greyback had retreated, and wanted nothing more than to be rid of the rogue.

"…you captured Greyback, Hermione, despite what he did, and what you saw. And still, you continued to work with 'them.'"

Hermione could breathe again, a reprieve in the mucus and swelling, and she could still smell the lingering odor of hashish that must have permeated everything in the office. It puzzled her that Neville smoked, let alone a medicinal weed.

" _'Them'_ , you mean werewolves."

She knew it sounded cold, but she was more surprised that Neville Longbottom, of all people would refer to the community she worked with as 'them'.

"Why?"

Hermione sighed and took another sip of the mint and lime concoction. "Does it matter? It is a job…one that seems you need to utilize."

Neville smirked. "Fair enough."

Hermione finished the drink and set the tumbler on the edge of the desk.

"But if I did not say it then, or even at the funeral, I'm sorry, Hermione…I'm sorry about Ron."

She lowered her eyes and nodded. It _had_ been Ron's funeral, the last time she had laid eyes on Neville. Neville really had grown into himself since then. But the truth was Hermione could only vaguely recall the affair.

She refused to think of it any longer. She had many long, lonely nights to grieve, and it was daylight and Neville Longbottom was beginning to look uncomfortable at her long silences.

"I have an appointment at ten," she said taking a deep breath. "It might be a place for you, for _us_ to start, but I have a couple of conditions…"

"Conditions?" Neville asked, his expression shifting to one of relief that their conversation had moved away from the past.

"The appointment, you have to swear to me that this person I am meeting, well, that you never divulge who it is or his affliction. He won't be terribly happy that I will be bringing you, but I am certain that if he knew about your investigation, he will cooperate and give what information he may have."

"Ok then," Neville said softly, reaching for his robes.

"I really mean it, Neville…a vow. This is how important this meeting is…"

An Unbreakable Vow. Hermione had had to take one before her appointment would ever confide in her, asking for support when necessary. Hermione had secrets, most of which were not her own.

* * *

The far end of Diagon Alley, if one walked it, eventually lead back to Charing Cross Road through a Disillusioned wall. Past Ollivanders the shops turned into residential buildings with flats and restaurants on the street level. There were other structures, all cobbled together as much as the rest of Diagon Alley. Hermione's appointment was at a small restaurant several doors down from Ollivanders, hidden below a discount robe shop that competed with Madam Malkins, one that Hermione realized sold only second hand robes after Molly Weasley had pointed it out years ago with some sadness. The restaurant was owned by an old hag who fancied herself a French chef. The subterranean eatery was a favorite among denizens of Knockturn Alley because of its privacy, but it was also popular with a lot of witches and wizards for the excellent food. The French Goat, it was called, and when Hermione led Neville down the street stairs to the unlikely entrance, she knew he was on his guard.

Inside the restaurant was dark with low hanging pendant lights, very much like a French bistro at night, only it was before lunch and in London. Hermione saw her appointment sitting as he normally did, in a back booth, only his lower face lit by the dim flickering of lamp light low over the red clothed table.

"It will be best if I do all the talking," Hermione whispered, feeling Neville just at her left shoulder.

Neville was a good deal taller than her, and considering how horrible she felt, she felt smaller than normal. She knew she looked terrible, having caught sight of herself in the glass of the shop windows they had passed on the way to The French Goat. Her hair was lank in the summer humidity, and her face was pale and drawn, and her lips were dry, dark circles around her eyes, despite healing the black eye she had received hours before—she looked like death. She felt like death.

Neville, on the other hand, looked like a guy, just a normal guy enjoying the summer day without rain. He had left his red Auror's robes in his office, but Hermione had Summoned a cloak from her office as they were leaving the Ministry. She needed to go to St. Mungo's and get some rest.

"Blaise, good to see you," she said, standing next to the booth, meeting her appointment's hand midway.

Blaise Zabini, former Slytherin, multi-millionaire, and werewolf, studied her with his dark eyes and frowned. "You are ill, Granger?"

"Unfortunately, but I do not think it is contagious."

Blaise Zabini nodded, and immediately his eyes moved to Neville who had fallen back and was waiting to be introduced.

"Longbottom," was all Blaise said, and then with a glance to Hermione, rose from the booth. "This is…this is about the Americans, isn't it?"

Hermione frowned even as Blaise gestured that Hermione and Neville sit across from him. Blaise motioned for a waiter and asked that some bread, cheeses, and wine be brought. Hermione said nothing, but watched Blaise's body language as he sat down again, dressed in a handsome suit of dark green, as though he possibly had a more important meeting later. He looked as handsome as with his neatly combed hair and thin moustache—straight out of a Fitzgerald novel, Hermione always thought.

"I had hoped to talk to you about something that might be somewhat related to those Americans. Perhaps this is synchronicity, maybe providence that Longbottom came with you, Granger… I assume you told him of our conditions?"

Hermione nodded. "Of course, Blaise. Our arrangements are as always confidential."

Neville's hazel eyes flicked between them, and Hermione felt his body stiffen next to her. Hermione could feel Neville's discomfort, and smiled. "Neville is lead Auror…"

Breaking in suddenly: "Theo Nott was murdered last night," Neville said, startling Hermione with his interruption. "I am surprised you haven't heard, were you not classmates?"

Blaise Zabini's face went still, and his dark eyes shimmered in the dim light. Hermione felt the hairs on her arms rise and under the table; she reached over and grasped Neville's hand. Neville stiffened and slowly turned his head to look down at Hermione. She pulled her hand away and gave him a scathing glance before flicking her eyes to Zabini.

"I had _not_ heard," Blaise Zabini said, sitting back as the victuals and wine were set on the table. He did not hesitate to open and pour himself a large glass of merlot. Hermione sighed, and mimicked Zabini by pouring a glass for herself. Neville seemed to wait, watching Blaise keenly.

"But you were aware that he had been 'infected'?"

Blaise Zabini met Hermione's eyes, and she closed hers, shaking her head. Neville cleared his throat and Hermione glanced to him, meeting his frowning face with one of exasperation.

Throwing back his wine, Blaise refilled his glass and sighed.

"I recently became aware, but if you are asking me the details as to how or why, I could not say, Longbottom. I have not seen Theo Nott since school."

Hermione knew Blaise was truthful; they had had many conversations about his distance in and after school. It would not be until well after their schooldays that Hermione would learn the reason for Blaise Zabini's distance. He had been bitten as a small child, and part of the reason his mother had married over seven times was because they had found out that the Zabini's were werewolves. His mother had bitten him, nearly killed him, and killed his father. All of this, of course, was covered up, kept secret, and Madam Zabini ended up a perpetual widow. Hermione was not told how Madam Zabini had been afflicted, Blaise only giving her a sly smile when asked. Blaise's affliction was kept a great secret with the cooperation of Hogwarts staff, supplied by potioneers outside of England. When Hermione first met Blaise it was after Lavender's push for werewolf rights and representation, Hermione had had no idea who or what he was. That had been eight years before.

"Did a pack…?" Hermione began and immediately began coughing, a merlot flavored swallow of saliva catching in her throat.

Zabini's expression softened, pulling out a fine green handkerchief and passing it to Hermione as the coughing began to turn to sneezing. "…was he taken in?" Hermione finished after excusing herself.

Blaise smiled at her, and she found it strange that his expressions could shift from stony to friendly in what seemed like seconds. She could only ever remember one expression from him as a boy—disinterested. When she started to hand the handkerchief back after casting a quick Cleansing Charm, he waved it away.

"No, I don't think so. There was rumor that he turned away and ignored the usual overtures from a couple of packs. By the time I heard, we decided not to move upon the information…"

Neville shifted next to Hermione and it startled her. She had almost forgotten he was sitting only a few inches away.

"You are part of one of these packs?" Neville asked and Hermione tried not to roll her eyes. She had tried to do her best to explain it, but she had only maybe an hour—months, years were needed to have any form of real understanding.

Blaise met Hermione's eyes and she shrugged. "I am," Blaise said, reaching out and taking some cheese off the board. He popped a piece in his mouth and leaned back out of the light. In the near dark, Blaise's eyes glowed a golden brown, and though it did not startle Hermione, Neville stiffened and Hermione noticed the slow movement of his right hand to his wand on the holster of his belt.

"Why did you want to meet today, Blaise? You mentioned the 'Americans.'"

Neville relaxed slowly, and Hermione coughed, reaching for her wine. Blaise grinned, his teeth too white in the dim/dark.

"I'll get to that, but when was the last time you spoke with Brown?" Blaise asked in a purr, his supernatural eyes moving to regard Neville for a moment and then moved back to Hermione. When Blaise leaned toward the table again, grabbing a few more bites of cheese.

"Years?" Hermione croaked between a break in coughing.

"So you've not heard what she's been up to lately…" Blaise murmured, reaching into his jacket pocket, making Neville stiffen again. Slowly he pulled out a business card and Conjured a biro. Hermione watched Blaise begin to write on the back, but reached over and tapped Neville again, forcing him to lower his casting hand from his wand.

Hermione rolled her eyes at Neville and he seemed to color in the dimness and let himself slouch back into the booth.

"Last I heard she was working well with her pack, and had their blessing to start working with Support Services…I mean, she has sent a good bit of correspondence my way, but I've not seen her since Ron's…" Hermione trailed.

She felt Neville's eyes on her, but she inhaled shakily and pushed away that dark trail to memory. Instead, she cleared her sore throat and reached for the last of her wine.

"She has found a 'new calling' lately," Blaise supplied, motioning to Neville, at last, to help himself to the light fare. Neville shook his head, crossing his arms before his chest. "She has left her pack and has formed a new one."

Hermione frowned. "Where?"

"London, they are meeting just down the alley as a matter of fact."

Neville frowned. "Pardon my obvious ignorance, but can we get back to what you said about me being here might be providence?"

Blaise seemed to snarl, but it reminded Hermione of a feral grin. All the same, it was a warning. Hermione knew she had really pushed a boundary by bringing Neville, and it was really pushing it further than Neville was an Auror, and further still that he was unaware of certain protocols.

"From our intelligence, the Americans were turned forcefully, and when their bodies were found, there were some…irregularities," Blaise said softly, finishing his writing and Vanishing his pen. He pushed the card across the table to Hermione, and she smirked when she saw what was written there.

Neville scowled, but Hermione lifted the card to show Neville. It was a concoction to 'Cure a Summer Cold'.

"Irregularities?" Neville asked, looking away from the card and Hermione frowned, reading over it again before mouthing a thank you toward Blaise.

"Brands on their hands."

Neville leaned forward. "That was never released," he hissed, "how…?"

Blaise chuckled and Hermione blinked at the men, one angry, the other amused. It reminded her of House dynamics a lifetime ago—Slytherins baiting Gryffindors, Gryffindors getting righteously indignant…

"I have my channels, Longbottom, just like you surely have yours, but the point being, those brands…it is a symbol Brown's new pack, and they are having very interesting public meetings in an old hall near the end of the alley."

* * *

Blaise had paid for the light fare and bid Hermione goodbye, nodding to Longbottom. He had another appointment at Gringotts at eleven, and wished that Hermione feel better soon.

"It was my grandmother's recipe, and it has always worked for me…" he whispered to her, after Hermione managed to get Neville out of the booth to bid him goodbye. When he cupped her cheek and gave her a long look down into her face, she felt Neville's annoyance as heavily as she did the drainage stuck in her sinuses.

Hermione sat back down across the table from Neville, and picked at the bread and cheese, thinking.

"Well, I have a couple questions," Neville said finally, his face pinched with frustration. Hermione smirked at him as she chewed a piece of sweet and soft brioche.

"Only a couple?" she murmured her mouth half full.

That made Neville's expression soften only slightly. "Leaving a pack…" he began.

"…is a big deal," Hermione finished. "To be _accepted_ into a pack is a big deal, and then to leave it? It is a betrayal. After the War, there were so many people infected or afflicted in some way that what was left of the packs not decimated by Greyback saw an opportunity. Lavender was taken under the protection of a pack, a progressive pack that saw the prospects of taking in people like her. The packs, for the first time, had an influx of 'new blood,' something the packs had not ever had. That was the only upside of the War, I guess…new blood…" she trailed, another dark path to a memory popping up in her brain. She shook it free by shaking her head and watching Neville and his slowly relaxing face. "Think of it this way: what if you decided you did not want to be a Gryffindor anymore and wanted to join the Slytherins…"

Neville scoffed, "Imposs—"

"That is what leaving a pack is like. Then, to go on to form a new pack?" Hermione inhaled and held it, her nose starting to drip like a leaky faucet again.

"You trust Zabini?" Neville asked while Hermione began dabbing at her chapped nose.

Hermione met Neville's eyes. "I do."

"Can you tell me why?" he asked, leaning his arms on the table top. "I mean, I know it's none of my business, but he knew details…"

Hermione sniffed and hoped that she had not blushed. "You're right, isn't any of your business, Neville, but if he knew about the Americans and had concerns, I think your department needs to rethink your approach to the packs. Blaise asked for this appointment four days ago."

Neville frowned deeper. "That's why Harry called, for you and your expertise…"

She laughed aloud at this. Hermione was never so un-expert at anything in her life, and maybe that was why she kept on working at Werewolf Support Services.

"I honestly don't know how much I can help, or by what I signed this morning, consult with you on this Neville."

He shook his head. "Well, I have a lead to follow, thanks to you. Speaking of…" he said moving to stand from the booth.

"Where are you going?"

Neville stretched slightly, causing the few other patrons to notice him. Hermione watched as Neville took in every patron, and realized that his motion was intentional. When he turned back to Hermione, there was a sparkle in his hazel eye, catching one of the low lights.

"Down the street to see about these public meetings…"

Hermione sipped her wine and watched as Neville nodded to her and turned to leave. This was maybe where her involvement would end, she thought. Maybe she did not have to know any more, not murders, not strange alchemical symbols being branded into hands… Maybe she did not have any obligation to know what her old classmate Lavender Brown was up to, and maybe she really did not want to have to talk to her again after the scene at Ron's funeral… But still, Hermione could not shake the feeling that some design had been set in motion to make her insane.

Then, there was the letter…and the overwhelming feeling that something would never be resolved in her soul otherwise.

Neville had already left the restaurant, and was out of sight. Hermione downed the rest of the merlot Blaise had paid for, and ground her teeth.

"Damn it."

And she rushed after Neville.


	3. Chapter 3

Note: Updates forthcoming. Please refer to my LiveJournal for additional information.

Additionally: in another review it was mentioned that since this story takes place in the UK, healthcare should be socialized. Well, maybe? I'm sure if I dig I could find a thesis on economics in the Wizarding World. As it is, healthcare is not socialized or 'free' as a reviewer mentioned in another fic-at least not my stories. I think that a world whose economy is run by Goblins, nothing is socialized or 'free.' Many thanks for an interesting thought experiment, reviewers.

* * *

Augusta Longbottom finally died, and Neville, her own grandson, got nothing out of her will. Frank and Alice Longbottom had died not long after the War. All the years of extreme spell damage had finally taken its toll, and they passed away within hours of each other in the Spell Damage Ward of St. Mungo's. And then a few years later, Augusta died. Neville found that by the time he had been offered the Herbology post at Hogwarts, he was the last living Longbottom. He would find a twisted sense of satisfaction that he might actually be the end of the line of Purebloods going as far back as Edward the Confessor.

It was fitting.

There had been so many days he wanted to just end it all. There were so many days he just wanted to give himself some well-placed spell damage and end up where his parents had been. And then, there were so many more days he would just self-medicate and do his job. The only real peace was when he was able to put his hands into the earth and work with his plants in his garden at his childhood home the Longbottom house. Of course, with her death, the house had been sold to finish paying off the bills to St. Mungo's and Neville was left to rent a small flat in Soho with barely room for pot of his Mimbulus mimbletonia and pot of his own experimental hybrid of cannabis on a window sill. The prospect of a tenured position with room, board, and very little danger, was all he had to look forward to. At least, he thought, he would finally be able to have some security in his life…

The years as an Auror had been hellishly stressful, and the older he got, the harder it was to cope. He had been indulging more in his hashish/tobacco cigarettes—not illegal, but not exactly acceptable either. Of course, as a grown man, he would just tell his detractors to 'fuck off' and would keep on going.

Besides, there was nothing else that seemed to help with what he called the stress of surviving. He had tried Healers, even a Squib therapist (who had suggested smoking cannabis initially for stress), but he simply did not have the time to examine the mess of his life and its broken bits. Neville kept busy.

His last case, naturally, would be a strange one. Neville understood Death Eaters and their ilk, but anything else was outside of his wheelhouse. After more than ten years of a world without a Dark Lord, there were still bits and pieces of Voldemort and his Death Eaters to eradicate. This case with the Americans and Theo Nott and Jane Doe was just bad luck. He drew the proverbial short straw. But Neville felt it was a little more than that, it was fate, maybe…especially when he realized he had smacked Hermione Granger in the face with a metal door in the underground car park.

She looked ill, and when she came to his office just as he was packing up the last few boxes, enjoying a cigarette and the effects on his nerves, he realized she had a summer cold.

Only idiots got summer colds, his Gran used to say. Hermione was the furthest thing from an idiot.

The hashish was mellowing him out a bit, but he still felt very ill at ease around her.

He had not seen her, not really, since Ron's funeral. They worked in the same building, but never did their paths cross. Oh, he had heard things from Harry in passing. Harry was still close with Hermione, but Neville didn't inquire about his old classmate. He knew she was grieving, or had been ten years before, and Neville had never felt comfortable around grief. Who did?

Besides, he had his own demons to exorcise…not that he had or could, and thus the consistent smoking of his special cigarettes.

Hermione Granger had always confused him, even when they were at Hogwarts, but he respected her. As adults, she continued to confuse him. How in the world could she continue working with the creatures that tore her fiancé apart before her eyes? Neville knew he could not do it.

She had aged only a bit, but it had more to do with her eyes than anything. Those golden brown eyes were sad, and there was a deeper crease between her brows. Hermione Granger was still quite average, maybe a little underweight, and her hair was still a mess of curls, colored similarly to her eyes. If she was not ill, and she did not look so exhausted, Hermione Granger would be stunningly beautiful. As it was, she held herself like a sick person; her skin was too pale, her hair too messy, her eyes ringed with smudges of darkness. Even as he watched her move, he could tell it was trepidation, maybe even pain that went beyond current illness.

Neville had a slight limp himself; never quite healing from a Blasting Hex he caught several years before after tracking down Rabastian Lestrange in Northern Ireland. He knew he had changed, grown up maybe, but Hermione… She only looked slightly better, healthier than the last time he had seen her. And that time, she was dressed in a black dress that covered her like Death Eater's robes, obscuring her. Her hair had been cut short then, and Neville learned later it had been done at St. Mungo's to heal a head wound of some sort. Her hands were wrapped in bandages, and she smelled like antiseptics. She looked like she was dying, and when he knelt before her at the funeral at the Burrow, maybe she _was_ dying on the inside.

Neville recalled that she did not seem to see or hear him, her eyes fixed on bandaged hands folded on her lap. The only time he recalled seeing her react to anything at the funeral was when Lavender Brown started screaming at her.

He never got the details, the whole affair was not spoken about by anyone who had witnessed the shouting and screaming and wands being drawn and Hermione Granger rising up like a tsunami and Apparating away to stun the mourners. Neville recalled that it was Bill Weasley who had slapped Lavender Brown across the face and told her to leave. What happened after that, Neville would never know. He was still in shock that Ron Weasley had been murdered by Fenrir Greyback, but was still on active assignment and was unable to attend the very short trial. Greyback was given the Kiss immediately after the verdict was read, and by the Prophet's account, it had been almost a joyous occasion.

Time and work made it easy for him to forget some things, but not others.

Neville thought often about that last year at Hogwarts and how it irrevocably changed his life. He thought about the day not long after he had slain the serpent and sealed Voldemort's fate that he asked his Gran why she had consigned him to such a difficult childhood.

 _'To keep you sane, child, to keep you sane…'_

Sealing his memories of the night his parents were tortured sealed away much of his innate magical ability. For his entire childhood, a sieve had been placed between him and his magic until the day Voldemort died. The sieve had been easing wider for years, and with it he had better control of his magic, but with it, his earliest memories.

Neville often wondered how Harry coped, witnessing his mother's murder, and then he would bite the inside of his cheek. At least Lily Potter had not been tortured.

Neville's earliest memory was of his father's skin being flayed away from his legs by Rabastian Lestrange and Barty Crouch, Jr. Bellatrix Black-Lestrange performed a Cruciatus while Rodolphus raped his mother. Neville, all the while, was hidden away in a hamper near the bedroom door of his nursery. The memories were seen through holes in the wicker, and no matter how hard he screamed and cried, the Lestranges had not heard him. He would learn later that his father had placed him in the hamper and cast several charms so he could not be heard or even noticed. It would be hours and hours later that Minerva McGonagall and his Gran would come and find him, his parents unconscious and ruined in the floor of his nursery.

For his mental well-being his Gran modified his memory. After the War, it started coming back little by little, and it made Neville all the more determined to exact his revenge.

Which he did without giving Rodolphus or Rabastian the benefit of a trial…

By the time he had caught Rabastian, his parents were dead and his Gran was dying. After it was all over, and the Lestranges gone, Neville kept working, all the while talking with Pomona Sprout about taking over her position. His family duty done, the Longbottoms avenged, Neville hoped he could finally find his own sense of peace.

But this last case, seeing Hermione Granger again, feeling as though the stress would do him in, Neville wondered if there was such a thing as peace.

He felt her behind him in the Alley as he moved along the residential section toward the end of the Alley. She was wheezing by the time he stopped in front of the old theater, a structure that had been empty ever since he could remember.

"The lecture is about to start!" a boy called from the steps. "All are welcome!"

Hermione fell in behind Neville as he passed the boy, a handsome boy with blue eyes and dark skin and curly black hair, too young to be at Hogwarts, and went up the steps to the main entrance of the old theater with its dingy Greek revival façade. Neville glanced back at the thin boy, and frowned, he had surely seen the boy in the Ministry, talking with someone at the Improper Use of Magic Office… At the door was another witch passing out pamphlets, and Neville took one and was pointed to stairs that led to the upper risers off the very small foyer. Still, he felt, and this time heard, Hermione behind him, trying not to cough.

The theater, Neville found, was more like an operating theater. The Ministry had their own operating theaters for their Forensics division of the MLE, but this theater had more light coming down from high windows. The space was narrow, but high, and Neville noted that there was indeed an apron, raked slightly, and small. A large wrought iron candelabra hung high above, adding more light to the space as the midday was beginning to cloud up outside. A proscenium was set toward the back of the space, that held a black curtain that swayed slightly, but hanging before the curtain was a banner. It was this banner that Neville studied as he moved along an upper tier to stand next to another wizard dressed in very expensive robes.

The symbol on the banner was the same as that burnt into the hands of the four victims, the alchemical symbol for purity. Below the symbol, in very thin printed letters was the word 'Liminality.'

Neville glanced to his right to Hermione, and noticed, quite with surprise, that her face was oddly obscured, and then, looking to the finely dressed wizard on his right that his face was also obscured.

"It is a simply Charm to give the audience anonymity," he heard Hermione whisper, her voice pinched as he found she was rubbing her nose with Blaise Zabini's green handkerchief. "Quite clever, really. It activated when we came into the theater."

Neville frowned and instinctually touched his face. The curtain parted just then and three people walked onto the apron, their faces not obscured. A podium was Levitated onto the stage by someone on the house floor, and the voices that were a collective whisper hushed as a witch wearing a long lavender robes stepped forward.

"Oh Merlin," Hermione whispered.

It was Lavender Brown, in lavender robes. Her hair was long and braided so it fell over one shoulder, leaving the scarred right side of her face open to scrutiny. Her blond hair had streaks of white in it, Neville saw, and when her blue eyes scanned the tiers, they caught the light and flashed red momentarily—inhuman eyes.

Hermione edged nearer to Neville standing on the tier, her fingers tapping his where they rested on the brass banister before them. Neville bent his head near her face.

"She's been 'turned', it is her eyes…you can see it in her eyes," Hermione whispered. "It isn't uncommon for those who have been bitten or scratched and not 'turned' to be bitten during 'moon time.'"

Neville had not thought about, but as he stretched back up, looking over the assembled group of perhaps fifty or so attendees, he wondered how many werewolves were there. Some of the attendees were not human, not even an obscuring Charm could disguise that. There were a couple hags, goblins, a few obviously freed House-Elves, and two ghosts who floated high above, the light nearly washing their forms out completely. All in all, it was mostly witches and wizards, all waiting silently for Lavender to begin, flanked by her two grey robed bodyguards Were they bodyguards? Their faces were unremarkable, and Neville did not know either man—one blond, one brown haired, both big, both tall, both unfamiliar.

"Friends, it gives me great heart to be able to speak to you today. I see we have added a few more to our number today than yesterday…proof that our message is being spread. Remember, all are welcome here, with us, and that we are all a community of unique but equally empowered beings…"

Neville was intrigued. Lavender, or what he remembered of her, was never so charismatic or elegant. In fact, she had been almost as much of a misfit as he was—spacy, sometimes clumsy, and in Lavender's particular case, a bit of a flaky teenage girl. Looking at her in that moment, her face only lit by a warmer footlight from the apron, she was changed more than what appearances led him to believe.

Lavender Brown was a presence.

Neville listened to her words, likening them to perhaps a sermon, not that he knew much about Muggle religion. It was all about unity in differences, a voice for the voiceless, protection for those who had none. Werewolves, goblins, hags, and all sorts of entities who were either under represented or not represented at all, Lavender Brown appealed to these being, yes, beings, to come together under the banner of Liminality and demand a voice in the Ministry. Lavender's words began to take on power and passion, her eyes flashing blue and red as they moved over each and every face above her.

"Liminality is the state of coming into being, and together, we are, we will always be, and going forward we will make those in power recognize what we are! We are one!" she finished, pounding her fist on the podium. There were some very impassioned cheers, but the majority of the audience gave only polite applause.

Lavender thanked the audience and retreated with her two guards behind the curtain. Other gray robed people moved up the tiers with collection plates, and Neville watched as some pulled a few sickles out and dropped them in the plate. He slipped his hand into his denim pocket, and realized that Hermione was gone.

He found her outside the hall, watching as those who exited with him quickly Disapparated away. It was clear by her pallor; Hermione was upset as well as ill. When he approached, she looked up at him and licked her chapped lips.

"That was…" she began her voice thick. "Was that real?"

Neville frowned, and when Hermione opened her mouth to continue, she vomited on his boots. So surprised he was, that it was pure instinct that he caught her when she began to fall forward. Even with the heavy robes, Hermione Granger was bones in his against him. With a quick motion, he wandlessly Vanished the sickness on his shoes, wrinkling his nose at the odor of wine, and hauled Hermione up into his arms. She was too thin, too light. He glanced over his left shoulder, feeling the weight of eyes upon him and saw that several gray robed followers, that was what he would call them, watching him closely.

Neville Disapparated with Hermione in his arms, and knew as soon as he appeared within the safety of the wards of his Soho flat; it probably had not been a good idea.

Neville had fallen asleep in his worn leather armchair in the kitchen cum living room. He had smoked and felt the pull of sleep, knowing it was his body's reaction to stress. The sooner he left the Aurory, the better he would feel.

What roused him was the sound of Hermione's coughing in the small bedroom and he rubbed his face and glanced toward the windows, finding maybe only a few hours had passed. He rose slowly, his right hip aching. Hermione called out softly, not a name or really anything that made sense, but as Neville moved into the darkened bedroom, sitting on the edge of his narrow bed, he knew she was dreaming. Her face was sweaty, but he knew a fever had broken. Conjuring a cloth quickly with his Summoned wand, he wiped her face. She was wrapped up in her cloak and a throw he had pulled over her small feet after he had removed her very plain and sensible loafers.

"Where am I?" she rasped, her eyes still closed, curled up on her left side. Her face was pointed toward him.

"My flat. You fainted in the alley…"

"I vomited on you, I'm sorry…" she whispered. "Could-could I have some water?"

Neville Conjured a glass and then filled with his wand on the small bedside table. Helping her sit up, her eyes opening just a sliver, Neville helped her drink. Already, with the fever broken, she was beginning to color normally. Hermione's eyes began to clear and she sighed, moving to put the glass on the bedside table herself.

"Odd, but I feel considerably better…I can breathe," she said softly as Neville stood. She pushed the throw off her feet and slowly rose from the bed. Neville moved back into the living area, thinking to put on a kettle of tea. Hermione slowly shrugged out of her cloak and then her Ministry robes, drawing her wand and casting several Freshening Charms on her clothes and then herself.

"Care if I use your loo?"

"Help yourself…tea?"

"Sure," Hermione said, moving back into the bed room and considering which of the two closed doors to try, the closet was near the foot of the bed, the bathroom near the head, closest to the door to the bedroom. Hermione opted for the right door and after a moment, Neville heard the sink facet run even as he set a kettle on his small stove, opting to make tea without magic.

"Is it for PTSD?" she asked from the bedroom. The flat was small enough to have a conversation in separate rooms, but that thought flitted through his mind quickly at her question.

"What?" he asked, hesitating to pull two mugs from the cabinet by the sink.

"The cigarettes or whatever they are called. That plant on the sill…" she said, and out of the corner of his eye, saw her pointing to the medium sized pot of his specially modified cannabis over the sink.

Neville finished retrieving the mugs and set them on the small table he used for eating and working.

"PTSD? Is that a Muggle…?"

Hermione nodded as Neville turned, finding his tea tin and finishing preparing the tea. The kettle was quick to whistle and Neville moved automatically to finish the tea.

"Post-traumatic stress disorder, but it isn't unique to Muggles."

Neville lifted his eyes to her as he sat down at one of the only two chairs at the table. Hermione's color was good, but there were still dark circles under her eyes. She looked gaunt, and his estimation of her overall weight had been correct—her clothes hung off her. The white blouse with a ruffle down the front was baggy, and the belt that held on her navy dress trousers was cinched two holes tighter than where the thin leather was worn away. She could stand to gain about twenty pounds, he figured.

"There is a lot of Muggle research into the applications of cannabis to treat PTSD, is yours Healer prescribed?"

Neville smirked as Hermione moved to sit down and take her tea, a cheap oolong left over from his Gran's. Neville didn't normally drink tea.

"Self-prescribed, but I have consulted with a Healer."

Hermione's eyes studied him and she lifted her mug to drink, wincing at how strong the tea was, and then started coughing. The coughing was not so bad, and she waved a hand when Neville began to move to take her mug before she spilled the scalding liquid down her front. When the coughing subsided, she swallowed down more tea.

"It smells pungent," she said finally. "Not bad, per se, but pungent."

Neville nodded and drank his tea, eyes falling to the ring stains of other cups on the painted blue table top.

"Does it help?"

"Yeah, most of the time…but now, I've been smoking more…the stress…"

"Of moving on or this case?" Hermione asked, setting her mug down.

"Both maybe…"

He watched Hermione begin to take in his little flat, and he felt a swell of annoyance rise up. Her gaze was not judgmental, but curious. There was little in the way of decoration, no prints or pictures on the plaster walls. There were stacks of books and very little furniture. His armchair sat facing the bedroom, and stack of Herbology books rested on a small coffee table.

"I didn't know where you lived, and I didn't think you'd appreciate a fuss if I took you back to the Ministry," he supplied, a bit too tightly, and Hermione's eyes flicked back to his.

"Thank you," she said softly. "I…" she started, and blinked, rising unsteadily. Neville watched her gather up her robes and cloak from where she had left them on his bed, and then move to the door. "I should go."

Neville frowned. "Hermione…sit down. I think maybe we should discuss what we saw…Lavender Brown…"

Hermione licked her lips, and in her expression, Neville saw reluctance. The way she held her lips, her jaw, she was holding something back. It did not take a genius to see that she needed to tell him something…

Slowly she moved toward his armchair, and put her robes and cloak over the back before sitting down at the small table again.

"Tell me," he said softly, moving to throw his right ankle onto his left knee, sitting back in his small kitchen chair.

Hermione slouched for a moment, gasping the sides of the seat. Then she took a deep breath and straightened.

"Promise you won't think less of me…" she whispered, but before Neville could answer: "I got a letter…it's in my desk drawer, a letter threatening me that if I did not come to a certain place at a certain time to a car park in Kilburn, some very generally bad thing might happen to me."

Neville set his mug down a bit too roughly and the sound made Hermione startle.

"When did it come?" he asked, noting that Auror Neville was heavy in his voice.

"Two days ago, the day before Harry summoned me with his bloody frightening Patronus."

Neville withheld his slight amusement. "And no signature, no explanation?"

"None. I didn't think anything of it. I have had threatening notes before, and this one was only different because it asked me to be somewhere."

So, Hermione Granger got hate mail, Neville thought. How… _annoying_. Of course, she did advocate for werewolves, and it may not matter who held the position, all the same, she was Hermione Granger, and Neville remembered that even in school she would receive anonymous Howlers that would scream every obscenity at her for simple being who she was. Hermione may have been smarter, more talented, but she had had just as hard time of things in school.

"Nothing about coming to New Cross, or the Americans?"

Hermione shook her head. "I would have remembered that. I haven't had time to go through all the hate mail, though. This letter came via owl, directly to my office. A lot of my mail goes through the Ministry Mail room. I will check."

Neville nodded, and then, with a sigh. "Anything else?"

Hermione's eyes met his, slight apprehension in her gaze. "Not like that, but…Lavender…she's changed, but she hasn't…"

"What do you mean?"

Hermione took her tea again, sipping, as if buying time to consider her words.

"We were never the best of friends, I'm sure you remember that…"

He nodded, he, personally, never cared for Lavender Brown at all. She was as much a bully as Draco Malfoy.

"And with Ron, she carried a torch for him even after Sixth Year, and after the War, after what Ron and I saw with her attack, Ron went a little out of his way to make sure she was alright… It was really a guilt thing, Lavender had always been kind to him, and she had been so loyal. Ron even got Bill to talk to Lavender at some point while she was at St. Mungo's. By the time Ron and I were tracking down Greyback, she had left St. Mungo's and returned to Hogwarts to help rebuild and work with Trelawny… I don't know exactly what happened with her, but she changed, and maybe it was nearly dying, maybe it was the fact that she was afflicted, but she became very aggressive."

"Aggressive?"

Hermione sighed. "Toward Ron, not me. She basically decided he was for her, only her, and she would do anything to have him…until I hexed her bald one night when she showed up at our house…and then I hexed her again a couple weeks later when she showed up at our engagement party at the Burrow…"

She trailed, a ghost of a smile crossing her lips.

"And then…then Puzzlewood, and Ron was gone, and Lavender came to the funeral. Everyone came to the funeral, and I was still…still healing. I don't remember a lot of that day, but I remember Lavender screaming at me that I was a failure, that if I had really l-loved Ron I would have died instead. She tried to-to hit me when Bill stopped her, and I-I Apparated away."

Hermione paused and looked toward the window, away from Neville, her jaw trembling slightly.

"It was a little after that Lavender was all about promoting my department. It was an apology of sorts, but she had changed, and she threw all her vim and vigor into making sure that the 'afflicted' and the 'infected' were given every consideration. It gave me work, naturally, but it all seemed so…so over the top."

"And now this…Liminality?"

Hermione turned her eyes to Neville. "Yeah. With what Blaise said about her leaving her pack, it makes me wonder. But, I don't…" she whispered. "I don't know how or if it fits into your case, but it warrants some more investigation."

"That and your letter."

Hermione nodded. "I'll send it to your office tomorrow."

Then she rose and gathered up her robes and cloak.

"It's after four, and I don't think I can really handle anything else today… I'm going home."

Neville let his boot slip from his knee to the floor, rising. "Let me lower the wards, you're good to Apparate home?"

Hermione smiled. "Yeah, I think so. Thanks, Neville, I owe you one."

Neville flicked his wand, drawing it from his belt and nodded. With one last smile, Hermione was gone. He stared at the space where she had been and sighed.


	4. Chapter 4

Sitting in the tub, scalding water turning her skin a deep pink, Hermione sipped at a concoction from a Collins glass, already feeling the lingering fuzziness of illness be pushed out of her skull. Blaise Zabini's concoction of rum, a Pepper-up, and several other ingredients was quite effective. She had washed her hair thoroughly, and scrubbed her flesh until it prickled. The scoring of flesh made her flash to a recurring nightmare, and it annoyed her. Hermione was tired of being tired, and after the day of Neville, Blaise, and Lavender, she knew she needed to have her full faculties about her for the morning.

When she got out of the bath, the small lavatory filled with steam, she wrapped her hair in a thick white towel and moved to stand before the vanity. Wiping the condensation away from the glass, she was pleased to find that her face did not look so pallid and the darkness under her eyes was almost gone. She had steam rolling off her skin and a glow about her that had everything to do with Blaise's concoction and not some innate quality.

Smoothing a hand over her cheek, she looked at her body, and sighed. Skin and bones, and part of it had much to do with her inability to eat during her cold, but it was more than that. Some of it was just her, her life as it was, and her habit of forgetting to eat when she was involved with a case.

As she let her eyes move down to her collarbone then to her breasts, she frowned at the scar that never seemed to fade that started just below her right collarbone—three parallel lines running diagonal across her chest, along the inner slope of her left breast, down across her ribs and around to her back. The scar was still red and angry, and it pained her from time to time. The other scars, another set of three parallel lines started under her right shoulder blade and ran diagonal around the back of her right side ribs to her right front just to the edge of her pubic hair at her pelvis.

"Still there, I see," she whispered. It was what she always said when she saw them.

It was evidence of what happened that night, or, as Hermione thought of it, evidence that that night happened at all. She tried to quash recalling the old nightmare of the scars breaking open to reveal black fur underneath, but every time she saw them, a shudder and a vision would course through her.

Summoning her bathrobe, she wrapped herself up before taking her Collins glass and retiring to her bedroom. Hermione sank into her bed, a nice wide bed with thick and soft linens, and leaned back into her pillows and finished her drink. With a flick of her wrist, her hair dried and the towel pulled away and went to hang in the bathroom. Her hair, perfectly conditioned and clean, fell about her shoulders in soft, fragrant curls.

"Long day, long, long day," she murmured feeling sleepy and a little intoxicated, sinking down into the blankets, sliding out of her robe. A soft Nox darkened the quiet bedroom, the sound of the river outside lulling her.

When she fell asleep, able to breathe, she slept dreamlessly for once in a long while.

The sound of tapping woke her, however, sometime in the morning. Hermione sat up suddenly and realized she had overslept. The tapping came from the bedroom window and Hermione sighed, and rose stiffly from the bed. Nude and annoyed, Hermione opened the upstairs window of her house in Guy's Cliffe with a view of the Avon across the garden. A small Scops owl hopped in the window patiently, and for a moment she thought it was Pig. Blinking at the little owl, she remembered that Pig had disappeared not long after Ron died, and this owl was far less frenetic. Turning on the sill, it picked up a small envelope and lifted it up to Hermione.

"Thank you, little friend, let me get you some food," she whispered to the owl, a gray and white little Scops. It squawked at her as she Summoned her wand from where it had gotten tangled up in her robe and bed linens and then Summoned owl treats from the kitchen downstairs where she usually took Owl Post.

A cool breeze blew across the river and up to her bedroom window and Hermione sighed as she sat down on the window seat and opened her letter. She resisted the urge to look across the river, where sometimes she noticed a black dog lying on the bank near the Muggle roadway that was blocked from view by a copse of willows. Hermione swallowed, only ever thinking about that strange dog when she looked toward the river.

The little owl ate veraciously despite its cool composure waiting for her to open the window. The letter was Charmed to be small, but upon breaking the black wax seal with no mark, fine glossy paper expanded in her fingers. The paper unfolded slowly, revealing letters spelling out in fine silver script and Hermione frowned.

 _'It is our honor to invite Ms. Hermione Granger to the annual fundraiser for the Society for the Equal Rights of Beings.'_

Hermione scoffed as the script continued.

Formal dress was required, and there would be catering, dancing, and an auction. The invitation would act as a Portkey on June 30th, 8 PM. RSVP not necessary. The fundraiser would take place at a grand manor outside Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.

She folded the invitation and sighed. She had never heard of the 'Society for Equal Rights of Beings.' It almost sounded like a joke…a jab at her 'Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.' The memory of that naïve venture made her smile. Hermione Granger had grown up a lot since then, but still…she was working for the rights of werewolves, so maybe not so grown up after all?

Stroking the little Scops owl and bidding it goodbye, she closed the bedroom window and went about getting ready to head into the Ministry. Surely her lateness would be forgiven, or maybe not noticed at all. All the same, Hermione wondered what the day would bring, if Neville would want to talk with her further, or if she even had anything useful to provide.

As she slipped into her loafers after putting on a pair of black slacks and a tasteful red blouse, she adjusted her Ministry robes in the mirror over the credenza by the front door. She had a flash of dread thinking that she needed to send that anonymous letter to Neville. It was not just that, it was the memory of Lavender Brown preaching before an anonymous audience and the strangely too informal atmosphere of it. Hermione had a strange feeling about all, and it was not just because the symbol the group was using was burnt into the hands of four victims.

Walking out into her front garden and past the gate, she Disapparated and found herself in the ladies toilet, standing in queue behind others finding that she was not running as late she believed. It was just like every other day, really, standing in the ladies toilet waiting to 'flush' herself in the Ministry. But as she took a step forward, standing behind an older woman with worse hair than her own, that she felt eyes upon her.

Ahead of her, just moving into the stall, was none other than the very person she had been thinking about. Lavender Brown seemed to look right through Hermione, with no expression on her scarred face. As Lavender turned and stepped into the stall, the light caught her eyes for a split second and Hermione shuddered.

Why was Lavender coming to the Ministry?

Hermione exhaled when Lavender's swirling hair was gone down the loo, and she glanced around. None of the other ladies seemed to notice that Lavender Brown, now a full-fledged werewolf, was not taking the visitor's entrance into the Ministry.

Once in the foyer herself, Hermione scanned the high hall for Lavender and her aptly shaded robes and long graying blonde hair. Moving past security, flashing her wand to get her inside, she spotted Lavender being escorted by a Watch Wizard to the lifts. Hermione fell back and waited before entering a lift.

It was unnerving, and Hermione felt a little stupid, in truth. But there was just something not right about Lavender Brown, and it was not just the fact that Lavender had been barmy and potentially dangerous all those years ago. Hermione finally got to her department a few minutes later, realizing that she could have taken more time at home…Amos Diggory was just entering his office down the corridor. He nodded to her coolly, as he always did, and Hermione wondered when he would be retiring.

Hermione went to Old Scamander's office first, hoping to be able to talk to him about what had happened so far with the investigation. She knew she couldn't tell him everything, but she felt obligated to inform him of what she could…and maybe ask him about anything he knew about Lavender Brown, Liminality, and this Society for the Equal Rights of Beings. However, the door was closed, locked, and though she could hear Theseus's quill scratching on parchment, he did not answer the door when she gave a soft knock.

With a sigh, Hermione went to the door of her office, and immediately frowned. The door was ajar.

Drawing her wand slowly from her robes, she used the toe of her loafer to push the heavy wooden door open. Summer sunlight streamed into the office from the single small window, and Hermione found the office empty. She sighed, and then sniffed. There was a strange odor in the office, like an unwashed body, and she rubbed her nose. Everything seemed to be in place, nothing disturbed, and as Hermione cast a charm to freshen the air, she slipped out of her robes and closed the door, hanging the heavy robes up on the back of the door. Already there were a few memos waiting on her desk, having floated in through the transom over the door and landed as they normally did.

It was when she sat down and saw Neville's memo, asking for her to come to his office at her earliest convenience that she noticed her desk drawer was open just a sliver.

Her breath caught as she reached for the drawer, and upon touching the handle, knew that the lock and the wards she had set upon it were broken. Someone had known what they were looking for, Hermione realized as the only thing missing was the anonymous letter threatening her if she did not come to Kilburn. Anger coursed through her, and Hermione was surprised. It had been a very long time since she felt such all-consuming anger.

She immediately checked her wards, the ones on the door, on the transom, and her desk. All had been disabled, but as she closed her eyes and visualized her wards like a golden web of magic, there was no clear fingerprint, no weak point. Hermione opened her eyes and scowled. Her ability was proven, and Hermione had no doubt that whoever had broken through her wards had an idea what they were doing.

This time she pounded on Theseus Scamander's door.

The face that greeted her through the crack in the door was grizzled with a white beard and bright but narrowed blue eyes. Theseus Scamander was beginning to show his age—a grumpy Father Christmas, it was that day.

"Someone has broken into my office," Hermione said when Scamander began to castigate her for disturbing him again, or maybe because she was now consulting with the Auror, but at Hermione's words, Theseus Scamander, second of the name, opened the door and pulled Hermione inside with a deceptively strong hand.

Theseus's office was a health hazard, the windows covered, and every bit of space taken up with cages, books, and rolls of parchment. It had a sickly sweet odor, but as untidy as the office was, Theseus was sure to take very good care of any creature he was currently 'interviewing' as he called.

There was no place to sit, so Theseus limping to the only somewhat open part of the office, Conjured two wooden chairs and motioned Hermione to sit. He had yet to speak, and after a sly look over his shoulder to a covered cage, cast a Muffliato, or a variation of the spell over them. Hermione sat down, eyeing the covered cage, and then sighed.

"Was anything taken?" Theseus asked finally, his voice very raspy, almost like a whisper. He was always soft spoken, but an unfortunate incident with an Obscurial as a small child had wounded his throat. Since then, his voice always sounded like the rustling of wind through dry leaves.

"Yes, a very specific thing that I intended to turn over to Auror Longbottom. A thing that I should have told you about days ago…" she sighed, grasping the fabric of her pants over her knees. "I checked the wards…no signatures to speak of."

Theseus's blue eyes narrowed further. "I have been in the office since before dawn, and I had heard no one in the corridor…" he trailed. "This investigation…is there anything I should know?"

Hermione shifted and forced a smile. "If I could tell you anything, you know I would, but as it is, I really don't know anything other than it has something to do with werewolves…but…" her eyes grew distant. "Have you heard of Liminality?"

Theseus, drew his wand and Conjured a small tea table between them, and then Summoned a tea set that was already prepared from his overflowing desk. He was considering as he made Hermione a cup of tea, with just a splash of cream. They had had many teas together through the years, but somehow Hermione felt this was different.

"Liminality, the state of becoming, _or_ liminality as in being on a threshold of new perception?"

Hermione shrugged. "It's a group. I daresay, it almost seems like it could be a cult…" and she went on to explain what she had seen the day before, admitting that she had felt extremely ill and her perception was most likely skewed. She left out meeting Blaise and that Neville Longbottom had been with her, however.

Theseus listened, slurping his tea, staining his beard slightly. When Hermione finished, remembering that she still had a pamphlet her in her Ministry robes, she Summoned it and the paper flew through the transom of Old Scamander's door. She admitted she had almost forgotten about it, and looked it over before slipping it across the table to her department head.

"Liminality, eh?" Theseus rasped. "The Society for the Equal Rights of Beings…is a financier, it seems."

Hermione frowned and motioned for the pamphlet and yes, in small lettering on the back, near the bottom, was the name The Society for the Equal Rights of Beings.

 _'Liminality is graciously supported by the efforts and magnanimity of the Society for the Equal Rights of Beings.'_

"I-I got an invite from this Society…"

Theseus's eyes twinkled. "As did I …"

Hermione smirked. "And you're not going?"

Theseus smirked over his tea cup. "Of course not. Do you have any idea how many invites I get to things like this? Different groups lobby for loosened regulations, or tightened regulations, and I really could care less… Besides, I don't like to dress up to come here, let alone to some social function…"

Hermione could sympathize. After the War there were loads of benefits to raise funds for this or that, and Hermione had had her fill of wearing a little black dress and pretending that she was doing something worthwhile. After Ron, however, she never went out.

"You should go, Hermione," Theseus said finally, motioning for Hermione to drink her tea, which she did, her eyes distant. "And I'll look into who may have broken into your office."

Hermione swallowed her tea and sighed. She nodded.

"And hopefully you'll be done with this mess and we will have a better idea of what is really going on in this wild world."

Hermione looked away when the lift opened and Lavender Brown was waiting with a few others to board. Hermione inhaled slowly and lifted her chin, stepping out, passing by her old school mate, feeling Lavender's eyes passing over her pointedly. Hermione did not bother to glance back as she moved down the corridor to Neville's office door, finding it open and Neville sitting at his desk, leaning over several pages of parchment.

"Hermione, come in," he said after a moment, glancing at her out of the corner of his left eye, "Close the door."

Hermione finally glanced back down the corridor to the lifts and managed to see one last vision of Lavender Brown as the lift drifted and zipped out of sight. Entering, Hermione leaned back against the door to close it and immediately Neville produced a cigarette from his desk.

"You mind?"

Hermione considered. "No…just…"

Neville lit the cigarette with his wand tip and motioned to Hermione to sit, which she did with a furrowed brow.

"I called Lavender in," he said and Hermione wanted to say that she had seen her, but instead waited as Neville looked over the parchments and then look up at her with a sheepish smile. "She is nuts, you know… I had a Dicto-quill take everything, and all of it," he motioned to that parchment, leaning back into his office chair. "…is barmy. I mean, I was never of the philosophical bent, but I did not think she was either."

"May I?" Hermione asked, moving to the edge of her chair. Neville slid the parchment toward her, watching her keenly as she began to read.

"You asked about the symbol."

Hermione read on, and never once did Neville mention the American victims or Theo Nott. He asked about the symbol and Liminality, and as she read on, she understood why Neville had said Lavender Brown was nuts. Whatever it was she believed, she believed with every bit of her soul. From what Hermione could discern, Lavender was on a quest to get all sentient creatures considered 'Beings'. Equal status for all thinking creatures… Hermione felt her chest seize, realizing that once upon a time, she had wanted the same thing. Of course, after working with centaurs, goblins, and werewolves, one blanket consideration of 'Being' status was just not going to work.

Centaurs wanted nothing to do with the Ministry of Magic; they just wanted to be left alone. Goblins wanted nothing to do with the Wizarding world unless gold was involved. And werewolves…they just wanted, as far as Hermione had experienced, not to be hunted, killed, and in the very least, discriminated against.

 _'…we are all creatures constantly evolving. We have the potential to become more, to be more, and if we work together, we can all be luminous beings and change this world into one without wars, without violence…'_

Hermione closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. It was not all that insane, it was just…naïve.

"Someone broke into my office and stole the letter," Hermione said then, opening her eyes and placing the parchment back on the desk.

Neville's left brow rose at this, smoke haloing his head. "That's…that's something."

Hermione chuckled darkly. "It certainly is…but there's more."

Neville inhaled his cigarette and held it for a moment before releasing a stream of oddly scented smoke. He then moved to squeeze the burning cherry out into a small ashtray in his desk drawer. With a quick charm, the odor of smoke was banished.

"I got an invitation to a—"

"Fundraiser? So did I."

Hermione blinked. "Really?"

"I am waiting on some research for down the corridor to tell me anything about this Society. I noticed it yesterday on the pamphlets they were passing out at Lavender's 'sermon.'"

"Will you go?"

Neville pursed his lips. "For the sake of investigation, perhaps…ah…here it is."

A folded memo flew through the similarly designed transom of Neville's office and he plucked it out of the air with the skill of a Seeker. Unfolding the parchment, Hermione watched his hazel, slightly dilated eyes, read over the memo, and mouth thinning.

"It is a legitimate charity, established in 2000, but there is not a main head of the charity, interesting…"

Hermione slid toward Neville's desk, listening.

"…well then…it seems as though your friend Blaise Zabini was involved a few years ago, donating a large sum to the charity to pay for a few motions to be put forth to the Wizengamot."

She frowned. "Not unusual."

Neville flicked his gaze from the memo to her and down again. "Nothing overtly untoward in our records, just general intelligence that the Society is to be monitored as they are not obligated to share membership rosters, board of directors or individual membership. Since the War, any organization that is not transparent with their membership is to be monitored by the MLE…"

"A secret society?" Hermione mused. "Perhaps that is part of the reason Blaise mentioned Lavender…the Society has been funding her group, at least in part."

"Perhaps…" Neville murmured, placing the memo on his desk. "I am no closer to understanding how it may connect to my four victims. It may be a diversion, using a symbol to lead me in a direction that will further obscure the real murderer…"

Hermione nodded. Or it _might_ all be connected. Someone turned the four victims, and she doubted in the case of the American victims, voluntarily. Then they burned a very distinct symbol into their hands, and more significant yet, somehow found a way for the victims to transform before the full moon. Hermione ran a hand over mouth, feeling very disconcerted, and a bit angry.

Why would they want her to come to Kilburn? Why was she invited to a fundraiser now? It did not make sense. Her capacity as advocate for Werewolf Support Services was a thankless, very powerless position. The change she was able to affect was slow, minimal…and she hated admitting that to herself.

"Go with me."

Torn from her thoughts, Hermione realized Neville had been studying her all the while.

"What?" she whispered.

"Go with me, as my date."

Hermione opened her mouth to retort, but Neville smiled and crossed his arms before his chest. Hermione realized he was dressed similarly as he had been the day before, but instead of a plain black t-shirt, it was a dark gray.

"I-I don't…" she stuttered, and then realized she had no reason to say no. She had a dress, she would have to alter it in the back to cover her scars, but it would be serviceable. She even had learned a nice Charm from Ginny years ago to tame her hair. And as she stared at Neville's handsome face, the way his jaw tightened under her scrutiny, Hermione knew that it would nice to be somewhere not at work with someone like Neville Longbottom…and she immediately felt her chest burn with a blush under her blouse.

"Okay, but this is…"

"…my investigation. If it turns pear-shaped, I swear I will get you out, but…"

"…but I need to know now. I need to know why."

Neville nodded. "Okay then."

"Okay."

The house was familiar when she looked up at it from yards away at the designated Portkey arrival site. Moving quickly to the paved drive, Hermione realized it was because it was designed by Luytens, and the only reason she knew that was because her mother was somewhat of an architectural historian, amateur. The brick, Neo-Elizabethan was a monolith of a house—Abbey House, it was called. And lit as it was, putting the façade in high contrast, Hermione could not feel as though it were a foreboding place.

"You look stunning," a voice said near her left ear, and Hermione turned as the tale-tell pops of Portkeyed guests arrived behind her. Neville Longbottom stood over her, not looming, but giving her a peculiar sense of security—he had her back, in a manner of speaking.

In the floodlights that lit the façade, she saw his hazel eyes shimmer as she turned and they scanned her from head to toe. Neville was dressed in a neatly cut tuxedo that accentuated his wide chest and long torso. His long hair was pulled back into a red ribbon, and he was clean shaven. He looked like a cross between Cary Grant and some handsome bohemian. Hermione felt her chest warm again from a blush.

"And you…Merlin, Neville, you look quite…wow…" she murmured as he offered his arm.

Neville hummed his thanks as they moved toward the entrance, where a red carpet was out and several other guests were moving ahead of them. Hermione did not recognize anyone, and she found it incredibly odd. It was not as if the British Wizarding community was so large. Even as she began to notice numbers of goblins and hags and several freed House elves, she knew none of them would ever set foot in the Ministry.

"Anyone?" Neville whispered, as if reading her mind.

"No one," she whispered as they moved into a very grand foyer, passing by human wait staff that offered flutes of champagne and amuse-bouche. Off the foyer and to the left was a dining room, and to the right, a room set up for dancing. Up the stairs, Hermione assumed were private rooms. Hanging over the staircase was a black banner with familiar silver script announcing the fundraiser for The Society for the Equal Rights of Beings.

Neville and Hermione walked a circuit around the foyer and finally stopped near the foot of the stairs, watching as more and more guests arrived, fifty or sixty by Hermione's estimation. There was even a boy, a blue eyed, dark haired boy with lovely caramel brown skin that wove through the crowd laughing. Hermione found it odd, but as the boy was dressed in a set of nice robes, his eyes flashed as he appeared to be fleeing happily through what seemed to a friendly group of guests.

"Hermione Granger?" a voice called out, and Hermione blinked away her attention on the boy, as a figure in a lovely pale blue sari slipped through several knots of people talking to come to stand before her. "And Neville Longbottom! Oh this is unexpected!"

Padma Patil had aged, Hermione decided. She had gained weight, and there was some light silver in her braid.

"Hello, Padma," Neville said softly, smiling.

"I had no idea you were coming! Does Parvati know?"

Hermione frowned, partly from Padma's contrived tone and the mention of her old housemate.

"We've not seen her, but we were quite surprised we were invited to such a lavish affair," Neville continued, and Hermione squeezed his arm, a gesture that did not slip past Padma.

"Are you two dating? Merlin, it has been so long!"

Padma was all smiles and gushing, and when she excused herself after a few more pleasantries with Neville, Hermione frowned. She scanned the hall, and began picking out a few familiar faces. Amos Diggory was there, as was, a surprise, Pansy Parkinson. When she saw Parvati, in a lovely red/orange sari, Hermione felt like disappearing.

"This is surreal," Neville said softly, and Hermione felt him begin to pull her away and behind the bottom of the stairs. "Most of the people here, I would never have pegged as equal rights types."

Hermione slowly slipped her hand from Neville's arm. "Neither would I, but I don't recognize many people…" she whispered.

Neville hummed, straightening his arm that had held Hermione's hand and ran it over his breast pocket.

Slowly, as if given a silent cue, those assembled in the foyer began moving into the dining room.

"Do you think it is a meal prepared by paid house-elves or maybe gentrified centaurs?" Neville joked as they moved to the queue.

Hermione tried not to laugh, but smiled at her companion. "At least it's free."


	5. Chapter 5

Neville had bought the tuxedo years ago for Harry's wedding. Since then, Neville had filled out, grown another two inches, and found that it did not fit across the shoulders or chest and the sleeves were too tight around his upper arms. When he tried on the trousers and found them far too short, he sighed. Had he really been such a misshapen boy?

In the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, he sighed as he began casting a few altering charms. His Gran had done so many with his clothes that Neville felt confident he knew what he was doing. Finally, the tuxedo fit, and he blinked at himself.

"This is me?" he chuckled. Maybe in some childhood fantasy did he look so posh and grown up, and slowly a type of sadness crept in as he looked at his reflection. He could see what his parents would have been in his features instead of the wretched things they had come to be after so many years…

Moving out of the bathroom, he slid his wand into his arm holster, Disllusioned over the tuxedo, and slipped a case with several rolled cigarettes into his breast pocket.

When the Portkey activated, Neville held his breath inhaling the scent of his flat, exhaling when his feet hit soft grass and the lights swirling around him turned to twilight of a garden before a great brick house. He had never been to Cumbria, but before he could consider the oddly lit house, he caught sight of her.

Hermione was studying the façade, her usual curls pinned up in ruby pins, exposing the long column of her neck. The dress she wore was simple, but Neville could tell it was altered slightly, and the Charm was beginning to slip as the low drape in the back began to fall past her shoulder blades. He could see her spine, and wished he could feed the poor woman. But it was more than that, it was the beginning of a scar, no, three scars under her shoulder blade he let his eyes fall up. Letting his wand slide discreetly into his palm, he whispered another Charm and the dress altered ever so slightly, hiding her shoulder blades and back. With a sigh, his eyes brushing down over her slim waist and the swell of her hips, the long slinky fabric covering her legs, Neville exhaled as he neared, her face turning to the side to reveal her lovely profile and a ruby teardrop pendant earring.

"You look stunning," he said, and meant it mostly. And when she turned, he meant it completely. In the twilight, she looked like she was made of pale gold, her eyes, her complexion… And when she smiled, her lips painted a very dark shade of red, he felt something in his chest go soft.

"And you…Merlin, Neville, you look quite…wow…"

He grinned and offered his arm and Hermione took it. He watched her a bit longer before remembering why they were at this strange house. He had the overwhelming urge to ask her about the scars, to feed her, to press her smaller body against his and dance her away from this strange house.

Neville had had a crush on her since First Year, but until that moment, he had pushed it so far down inside that its resurgence surprised him. Then he pushed it down again as they entered the house remembering that this fundraiser or whatever it was, was work.

The guests were mostly strangers to him, but he began picking out faces, unexpected faces among the throng. He saw the Patil twins near what appeared to be the ballroom, their dark eyes watching everyone and every so often they would whisper to each other. He knew Padma saw him, and his drew Hermione near the bottom of the grand staircase. There was also Pansy Parkinson, and Justin Finch-Fletchley. Oliver Wood was there, the celebrity of the night as a captain of the Wimbourne Wasps. Neville also noticed Amos Diggory and just as Padma wove her way toward them, Blaise Zabini.

Neville betrayed nothing to Padma, whom he disliked in school almost as much as he disliked Parvati. He could not help a certain sense of satisfaction as her eyes ran over his body in astonishment. However, Hermione seemed lost, and squeezed his arm. He glanced down at her and smiled. A part of him wanted to tell her that he would protect her, and he remembered who she was…

As the crowd began moving toward the dining room, Neville tried to lighten the mood, all the while beginning to feel his own anxiety ratchet up, and he slid a hand over the lapel of his tux, feeling that his cigarette case was still there. He sighed to himself. This was why he needed to retire. He could not do his job before feeling as if he were about to explode.

The dining room held a long table with tasteful centerpieces of summer flowers and fruits. As they approached, Neville saw that there were names on place settings.

"Neville…" Hermione whispered, pointing at her name as they neared the head of the table. Neville scanned and whispered for her to wait while he walked around the table, avoiding other guests as they seated themselves. He found his name on the other side of the table, a distance from Hermione. Neville frowned and met Hermione's eyes across a long gulf. With a gesture of her hand, he knew what she wanted.

With a quick bit of wand work that no one seemed to notice, Hermione's name took the place of Genelda Appleby, and Hermione moved quickly around the table. They sat down together and Neville could sense Hermione's unease. It was several more moments before everyone was seated, and Neville watched as the supposed host of the event moved to the head of the table.

"Welcome honored guests, and our dear friends," a voice called out, not needing the aid of a charm. "Tonight we gather to celebrate this year's efforts and to once again, for those who can, raise funds to continue our good work."

There were some chuckles and some light applause, but as Neville glanced to his left at Hermione, he frowned. She had grabbed his knee under the table, and her hand trembled.

Blaise Zabini was dressed as a multi-millionaire might be, in the finest dress robes Neville had ever seen with duotone black and green damask over a Muggle tuxedo. Seeing Zabini in proper lighting, Neville saw his head was shorn short and smoothed down in a tasteful wave, but he had a light moustache. His eyes were, in truth, a lighter brown than what he had noticed in the bistro, and as they moved over the faces in the dining room, flashed red.

"Now, let us dine, then let us dance, we will have an auction in the garden at midnight of rare and interesting items—all legally obtained, mind those of you who work with our Ministry…"

Again, some chuckles.

"…but all donated to raise funds for a noble cause. Now, let us start off with a toast to the future of us all, all of us beings worth equal rights and equal representation."

Wine glasses filled magically at each place setting, and Neville eyed his, a dark red wine, and felt Hermione's hand move from his knee and take her glass unsteadily.

"To the Society!" Blaise called.

The words were echoed, and nearly everyone drank. Neville did not, and Hermione only sipped, but there were others, mostly goblins, who refrained. The first course appeared on their plates, but Neville did not pay too much attention. Instead, he was focused on the witches set across from him, staring at him with such intensity that it made his skin crawl. The three looked to be triplets, ancient witches, or maybe even hags as wrinkled and warty as they were. They were dressed in the same dress, only in different shades of pale green—pistachio, mint, and sage perhaps? To his right was a very bedraggled wizard with long silver and black hair, a horrible scar running down his face, surely gouging out his right eye that was covered with a patch. His robes had very strong earthy odor, and he seemed to be just as ill at ease as Hermione.

Hermione, Neville noticed, was staring at her plate, unmoving. The other guests nearby were watching her, the witch to Hermione's left seemed very annoyed at her for not digging into to the first course. Even the trio of witch/hags began to turn their attention to Hermione and her trembling form.

"Hermione," Neville whispered, this time moving his hand to her knee. The contact of his hand, larger than her knee, seemed to shake her awake and she glanced at him and forced a smile.

"I-I'm okay…" she whispered.

Neville nodded, "Try the food…"

Neville, begrudgingly, followed his own advice as well, pulling his napkin from its place and grabbing what he hoped was the right fork. However, as he looked up and down the table, manners were lax. Some guests ate as if they were fighting their food, others ate daintily, ignoring the slurping and dropping of food on tablecloths and laps.

He wasn't sure what the first course was, but he ate. All the while, he stared back at the triplets as they ate with a refinement that was lacking by Neville's neighbor at his right.

"Aren't you…"

"…Augusta Gamp's…"

"…son?"

Neville chewed his food, swallowed, and reached for his wine, all the while Hermione watching him, her lips pressed tight.

"Grandson, madams…?"

The triplets began nodding and speaking in unison. "Yes, yes, her son died recently, yes, you look like Oliver, Augusta's husband…wasn't he a dish… Sayre, Madams Sayre."

Neville forced a smile. "Madams Sayre, I am Augusta Gamp's grandson, Neville."

The triplets smiled a horrible, toothless smile, and they said no more. Neville ignored them and glanced down at Hermione who was looking up at him with a soft expression.

"And you're Hermione Granger," the man to Neville's right said, his voice as rough as his appearance. He leaned over his plate, pushing it out of the way, and looked around Neville with his one very pale eye.

Neville sat back as Hermione also leaned forward to meet the man's gaze. When their eyes met, Neville stiffened as Hermione's hand found his knee again, grasping it out of alarm.

"Mr. Hornsby," she whispered. "A-a pleasure…" she stuttered.

Hornsby scoffed. "You are too kind, Miss Granger. You look much better than the last time we met."

Hermione's hand moved up Neville's thigh and he stifled a grunt as she leaned into him, as if to use him as a barrier.

"Thank you, Mr. Hornsby; you are looking very fine this evening. I am pleased to see you are well," Hermione continued. "Is your family well?"

Hornsby twisted his torso slightly so that he rested his right elbow on the table, resting his head on his fist to stare at Hermione.

"Quite," he said slowly, enunciating each letter. In the light, his single pale eye shined red for a moment, and Neville inhaled and began to work his wand down his forearm and into his hand. "Easy laddie, I mean the lady no harm, none at all," Hornsby said his voice low and steady.

Hermione seemed to relax and removed her hand from Neville's thigh.

"Yes, we are old allies, Mr. Longbottom…" Hornsby said softly, his scarred, worn face softening as his eye moved over Hermione. "We were in each other's debt years ago, and I do hope that now that time has passed, we can be considered allies again."

Hermione smiled then, and it was an unguarded smile. "Of course, Mr. Hornsby, of course."

And slowly the tension around Neville diffused, and the dinner went on. When the next course appeared, Neville listened to the witch on the other side of Hermione try to engage her in a debate. Hermione politely declined debating the import and export of beast derived potion ingredients, and as she downed her third or maybe fourth glass of wine, excused herself quite suddenly from the table.

Neville noticed that dinner was winding down as the dessert course began appearing at some place setting, and watched as Hermione moved to the door of the dining room, asking a porter a question and quickly glancing to Neville.

"Longbottom," Hornsby said then, and Neville turned his attention to the older man, no, werewolf, again. Hornsby wiped his mouth and grasping his wine, and turned slightly toward Neville. "Keep an eye on that woman."

"Pardon?"

"She may be in danger."

Neville frowned. "Care to elaborate, Mr. Hornsby?"

Hornsby grinned, revealing very gnarled and yellowed teeth. The smile made the man look feral.

"I was the one to find her and Greyback in Puzzlewood all those years ago. I was the one who told her man where to find Greyback…"

Neville's face fell expressionless as he regarded Hornsby clinically. Hornsby, by the records, _had_ _been_ the pack leader who had found Greyback in his territory, passing the information on to Hermione who was the only person in the Ministry who would hear anything other werewolves would say… The information was passed on to the Aurory, and naturally Ron Weasley and Hermione went to Gloucestershire to follow the lead. Neville refrained from closing his eyes to recall the exact details printed in the official file.

"The Wealsey man refused my help, you know. Miss Granger tried to persuade her man to listen…not to go headlong into danger…" Hornsby paused, taking a deep drink of his wine. "There were more dangerous things in Puzzlewood than Greyback."

Neville frowned then. "You're saying that it wasn't Greyback who killed R—"

"Oh no, that monster killed Mr. Weasley, to be sure. But there is some mystery as to how that bastard did not violate and kill Miss Granger. Greyback was vicious to females, and Weasley most likely had the better death…being ripped apart like he was." Horsnby paused again, looking around suddenly and when somehow satisfied, continued. "When I found Miss Granger, she was hurt, but not violated, and she had Greyback subdued. She held on until we found her, and we took Greyback to your Ministry and kept Miss Granger until she was able to return to London on her own."

Neville had not known. It was not in the official report, which he only skimmed over once but knew every word, not long after it happened. There had been no mention of Hermione being injured, and the only person who could have had that detail omitted was Harry Potter, the youngest Head of the Aurory in an age.

"Why do you believe she is in danger, Mr. Hornsby?"

Hornsby threw back the last of his wine, setting the glass down waiting for it to refill.

"She's here, at _this_ thing…" Hornsby scoffed. "I only come for the free victuals and the wine. As good as her intentions are at the Ministry, she isn't one of us…not really…but there are some here that would love to take the opportunity to see what she _really_ is."

Neville opened his mouth to inquire further, but Hornsby stood, as did the rest of the guests as at the head of the table Blaise Zabini stood and proposed one last toast before the dancing began.

Neville stood also, and looked around to see if Hermione had returned. She had not. And slowly as the toast commenced, he felt the overwhelming need to find Hermione and leave. Eyes followed him even as they toasted and drank…too many eyes, eyes that shined red in the candlelight, and eyes that shined like silver.

Something was very wrong, and Neville could not see what it was.

She was shaking in a small alcove with a chaise under the stairs. While the guests moved from the dining room, their voices slightly drunk with wine and fine food, Neville found Hermione sitting on a blue silk chaise, holding the front of her dress up where it appeared to be torn.

"Hermione?" Neville asked softly, casting several charms to give them privacy. At the sound of her name, Hermione winced, and then lifting her eyes up to him from where they were staring at the parquet under her heels, she seemed to fly from the chaise and into his arms, crying. He had never seen her so undone, never.

"What has happened?"

Hermione buried her face in his chest, and shook. Albeit shocked, Neville wrapped her in his arms and pressed a kiss at the crown of her head. When the last person left the dining room and the sound of music drifted from the ballroom, Hermione calmed herself and pulled away.

Indeed her gown had been torn from the low neckline down one side to her hip. Neville tried not to look at the side of her left breast or the scarring that ran down her side her hip. Hermione quickly wiped her face and drew her wand, Charming the fabric back together quickly and sitting on the chaise.

"I…" she began as Neville sat next to her. "I want to leave."

Neville nodded, having half a mind to tell her what Hornsby said, but was far more interested in asking Hermione what could have happened to her.

"But I don't think I can go anywhere without splinching myself…"

Neville began to offer to take her home, but realized he had no idea where she lived.

"Do you have any of those foul cigarettes on you?"

Neville tapped his breast pocket. "Let's go outside."

Hermione nodded, and then taking a deep breath, rose from the chaise, taking Neville's hand in her own. Together they slipped out of the front door and down the drive to what appeared to be the gardens of the house, finding that humans, not house elves, were finishing setting up a stage and chairs for the auction that was mentioned previous. The surrounding gardens were thick with summer blooms, and if the light was not so dim and Neville so troubled by Hermione's state of undress, he would have identified everything growing in the well kempt garden. They walked along a path toward a fountain where a cool spray made the air quite soft, and Hermione sat down on the lip of the fountain and looked at the lights in the water, a soft smile gracing her lips.

Neville realized, very suddenly, that Hermione Granger was and always had been a beautiful woman. It was like a sudden strike of lightning, this realization, and as soon as it came, he squashed it, drawing out his cigarette case and lighting a hand rolled 'joint' and passing it to Hermione.

He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and watched her inhale, hold it, and then cough, laughing softly.

"These are atrocious," she laughed, and passed the joint to Neville.

"But they work. I tried to make them smell a bit more fragrant…"

"Still smells like 'weed.'"

Slowly he smoked, waiting for Hermione to explain.

Then: "I went to the lavatory. I drank too much wine too fast, and I found the loo just in time. I know…I know, too much information, but it was as I was leaving that Lavender seemed to appear in the service corridor, as if waiting for me."

"Lavender ripped your dress?"

Hermione nodded. "But it isn't what you think…well, maybe it is, but…" she trailed, and Neville turned back toward the house, hearing voices nearby. When the voices faded away, Neville moved to sit next to her, passing the cigarette back to Hermione. "She warned me…she told me that I needed to quit my job, leave it alone, and leave this place and never come back…"

"She's right, Hermione, you need to go…now."

Neville flew between Hermione and the voice that seemed to come from the shadow. Wand drawn, Neville was ready for a fight as Blaise Zabini emerged from the shadows, his eyes glowing gold. The ice in Zabini's voice had Neville drawing his wand, and as Zabini approached, his strange eyes glowed, as did the cherry of his own cigarette.

"This was not something I authorized, the invitation of either you or Longbottom. I believe it was a ploy to have you examined, Hermione, and _now_ you are in danger."

Neville felt Hermione rise slowly behind him, one of her small hands resting against his back. Her own wand was drawn, and the fear he had sensed from her had turned to anger. It was an interesting wave of emotion flowing from her and crashing into him. It alarmed him that he could feel her magic so keenly.

"Care to explain, Zabini?" Neville asked tightly, his body shifting into a defensive stance, an instinctual pose after so many years as an Auror.

"I cannot. It is best you leave."

"Blaise…" Hermione began, but already Neville had grabbed her as a flash of something silver caught his eye and the deafening shot had Neville pulling her to the ground.

There was a distant scream from somewhere in the garden, and a thud. Out of the corner of Neville's eye he saw Zabini drop his cigarette as he grabbed his chest, the white cravat on his chest turning from white to dark red.

"G-Grang—" Zabini gurgled before falling to the ground. The thud Neville had heard was the sound of a bullet passing through a body.

"Bl-Blaise?" Hermione gasped, looking over Neville from the ground. Neville rolled his wand into his thumb and grasped Hermione by the shoulders, lifting her up as he rose.

"Gotta go…" he rasped as he saw another flash from behind a cypress. He pulled her close as a projectile splintered a piece of marble on the fountain near where they were taking cover.

Hermione did not protest and allowed herself to be pulled along into the shadows of the garden. She grunted as Neville pulled her against his chest, preparing to Disapparate.

"Gunshots," he heard her say before another crack filled the air.

The slicing pain in his shoulder stopped one, one that would have hit Hermione in the forehead if he had not moved to shield her. He winced, and taking in a deep breath, visualized and pulled Hermione along as they left Cumbria for the only safe place he could think of…

"What saved you that night?" Lavender asked, but Hermione knew that Lavender surely seemed to know better than Hermione did by the tone of her voice.

Hermione had crammed herself in a corner between the corridor wall and the lavatory door. Lavender Brown, dressed in a fashionable lavender dress that did nothing to hide her scars, blocked Hermione's escape. Hermione edged her fingers to her thigh and the wand concealed in her garter, reachable from the high slit of her skirts.

"What spared you that night while Greyback ate into Ron's body? _Do you know? Do you care?"_

Hermione's lips trembled, fresh color applied while she had been in the lavatory. "I-I d-don't know what you're talking about…"

Lavender smirked. "He didn't bite you or rape you like he did me, did he?"

Hermione closed her eyes, feeling tears begin to prick at the corners of her eyes. She had not known exactly what Greyback had done to Lavender. By the time Hermione had tried to save her, Lavender was a tangle of clothing and blood and organs. It had been somewhat of a miracle that Lavender had lived at all.

"Even after, he found me to taunt me; before he ran off to Puzzlewood…he came to my family's house, came into my bedroom, and had me again… I had to kill that one…but I got my boy at last, the one I was supposed to have, my Bastien, and now you and your Ministry want to take him away…"

Lavender's voice was a hiss, and Hermione kept her eyes closed, feeling her lean in closer, pinning Hermione to the wall.

"I-I don't know what you are talking about!" Hermione whispered, trying not to let her fear seep into her voice.

And then, Lavender had pulled away, blinking rapidly. Hermione had opened her eyes to witness the change in Lavender, as if her old classmate was remembering something.

Then, as if they had traveled back in time, and they were in the Gryffindor Common Room: "You need to leave, Hermione. This place, these people, not all them are harmless. Whatever it was…" Lavender reached out and grasped Hermione's dress at the neckline and Hermione gasped. "…that saved you; they think they know…how could they, only you…"

Lavender's fingers were like ice against her chest, and Hermione moved, stepping around Lavender just then, the cloth ripping down the side even as Lavender called her name as if to stop her. Hermione ran, she literally ran, down the service corridor and ducked into the alcove under the stairs, waiting as Lavender moved to of the corridor, passing the alcove and not noticing Hermione huddling there behind the back of the blue silk chaise.

Hermione sank down onto the chaise and shook, holding her dress together with her hands, lost.

What had Lavender meant? And who was Bastien? But that was pushed out of her skull… Hermione did not want to think about that night, she did not want to remember seeing Ron being torn, his eyes on hers, pleading with her… What had saved her? She only remembered casting several hexes at Greyback, an Incarcerous, and then nothing until she woke up at St. Mungo's and seeing Molly Weasley weeping silently at her bedside…and Harry in the doorway of the private room, haunting the door like a shadow.

They told her Ron was dead, but she knew, and they told her that she would be fine; the wounds were not from Greyback. Hermione could not remember being wounded, she could only remember being unable to help Ron. Even after years, she was not sure what had happened. She remembered something fighting Greyback, but it was always just a vague deep shadow in the darkness under the trees. She remembered Ron gurgling her name, blood and spittle wetting his handsome face, before those blue eyes went dull. She remembered hearing Greyback shout and then scream like a beast in pain. She remembered casting several hexes before Greyback could recover. She remembered being pushed down onto her back and something attacking her while she fought with her useless magic. Then she remembered voices and hands and blood and whispers.

The scars left behind were unexplainable. It looked like claw marks, ripping at her as if being rolled about like a doll, tearing at clothes, at flesh. The worst had been on her chest, it had been the last part to heal, and it still hurt sometimes. It was more what it symbolized in her subconscious, and the vision of the black fur underneath.

She never tested positive for the virus that lycanthropy truly was—incurable and curse-borne. Even people like Bill tested positive and doubtless Lavender before she was bitten. Whatever it was that had scratched Hermione, it only left scars, scars that never healed properly.

When Neville found her, Hermione had lost track of time. She had been carefully avoiding lingering on the image of Ron, and when she found herself in Neville's arms, she let out the cry she had been holding in.

Hermione Granger was frightened.

Lavender Brown and others seemed to know more about that night in Puzzlewood than she did… Hermione wished she could have just left Britain after Ron's death as she had considered doing…to go to the Americas and just disappear.

When Neville pressed a chaste kiss into her crown, Hermione calmed. Neville…Neville Longbottom… She never would have dreamed that he would ever provide comfort or a sense of security, but Neville had proved himself many times over in only a few hours, maybe even a day's time.

Shaken, Hermione did not feel she would be able to Disapparate home to Guy's Cliffe. By the time she felt she could begin telling Neville what Lavender had said and why her dress was torn, she was feeling the fuzziness of Neville's cigarettes. There was so much to unpack in Lavender's words. But Hermione understood why he smoked them—the distance between her reaction and her consideration was enough that she could calmly analyze the situation.

Then time sped up again, and Blaise was telling her to leave, and then he was shot and falling to the garden path. Something inside her flickered on, and she was moving as she used to when she was younger and trying to avoid curse fire. Except this time, it was gunfire.

Neville pulled her along, lifting her up as if she were a little doll, trying to find cover enough to Disapparate. When Neville grunted and she felt a spray of blood on her face, her brain nearly sent her back to that night in Puzzlewood, instead, she held on to Neville as tight as she could as the swirl of Disapparation took them out of the dark garden…and conceivably to safety.

However, as they landed roughly in the reception area of St. Mungo's, Neville lifting her up quickly from the tiled floor, Hermione whimpered at the sudden onslaught of noise. The reception area was busy, and there were several knots of people arguing in the area, two factions of Quidditch fans, the familiar orange of Chudley fans and the sky blue of the Tutshill Tornadoes. There must have been a match that ended in a large brawl, Hermione figured.

However, as she and Neville stood in the middle of a fray, Hermione saw two figures approach them from different angles, two figures with identical faces, but one in a pale blue sari, one in a pale red/orange…

"Neville," Hermione gasped, still holding him tight against her, she standing on the tips of her toes to look over his wounded shoulder.

"I see them," he whispered. "Hang on…"

Parvati was lifting her sari wrapped hand, and Hermione realized it was not concealing a wand…

And then the world swirled around them again, and Hermione felt her consciousness start to fade. The impact into the ground brought her back however, and she and Neville fell in the darkness of some interior space, Hermione rolling away even as Neville reached for her. It was just in time as Hermione felt her bottom half slip over an edge and dangle in a void of air.

Her eyes began to adjust and she realized that she was hanging off the edge of a buckled floor of a house that seemed to be in an advanced stage of collapse. Neville hauled Hermione back over the edge, rolling her over his body and to safety under the intact roofline. Above her were stars, millions of stars, and Hermione managed to catch her breath as Neville's shadowed face looked down into hers.

"H-Hermione?" he asked, and she stared up at him, his eyes almost as bright as the stars, though Hermione knew that perhaps shock was setting in.

When she grasped his face and pulled him down to kiss him, it was gentle, and short. Neville pulled away, wincing, and Hermione sat up, feeling as though she was covered in dirt and dust.

"Where are we?" she asked, her eyes adjusting to see that indeed she was inside a collapsing house, in the attic. A large oak grew next to the house, which was built in a Tudor style. She could feel household Charms still moving through the boards of the house, but they were ancient and degraded.

"My home…my Gran's house…in Shropshire."

Neville helped her stand, and apparently knowing his way in the dark, led her to the ladder that led down into the house. He lit his wand when they were in the upstairs rooms, sighing to himself.

"I thought someone had bought the house…" he muttered. "But it looks as though it was left to ruin."

There was anger in his voice, and Hermione wondered if it was at the waste or from some sense of home…

The main floor was untouched as they moved through a door and down the very steep and narrow stairs into a parlor. The furnishings were removed, for the most part, but as Neville placed her before the huge Tudor fireplace, lighting the grate with a heatless flame, he moved through the main floor. Hermione peeked after him as he moved into what looked like a kitchen, and then into another room, the wand light casting eerie shadows on bare walls.

"It's safe for now…the basic wards are in place, but once I'm…" he trailed sitting down on the stone floor next to Hermione, his face draining of color.

"Nev-Neville!" she gasped as he fell toward her, and she caught him before his face landed in her lap. Hermione laid him down before the fire, the only light, and looked to his shoulder.

She knew he had been shot, but with the adrenaline, he must have felt safe to let the pain overtake him. Ripping his tuxedo was far too easy, it seemed, and Hermione winced when she rolled his shoulder to see the entrance wound in the back of his thick shoulder, and no exit wound.

The bleeding was slow, and Hermione hoped that it meant the bullet had not pierced anything that would make him bleed to death. She knew basic battlefield medicine, triage, but of the magical kind. The fact was that this was a bullet fired from a Muggle weapon, made that newfound anger rekindle. Hermione rolled Neville onto his left side, his face to the fire. In unconsciousness, his face was unguarded, handsome, but Hermione had no time to admire her old friend. Instead she drew her wand and did the best she could.

Maybe an hour later, and close to complete exhaustion, Hermione had the bullet removed, the wound closed as best as she could manage with wand work, and Neville was sleeping. They needed Potions to reknit the muscle and skin, maybe even something to replenish the blood loss. She sat before the fire with his head against her thigh as she studied the bullet in the firelight.

It was not silver coated in dittany.

Neville stirred with a groan and opened his eyes to look up at Hermione.

"Get it out?" he croaked.

"Yeah."

Neville sat up slowly and Hermione was amazed at his resolve. He looked down at his torn tuxedo and with a sigh, shrugged out of the jacket with a wince and then pulled the bloodied shirt away. He moved to sit before heatless firelight, shirtless, wearing only Conjured bandages wrapped about his right shoulder. Digging into his ruined jacket, he pulled out his cigarette case and pulled out a smoke. He lit it windlessly, causing Hermione to blink.

Almost fifteen years ago, there had been question as to Neville Longbottom was a squib…Hermione did not think so of course, but seeing him shirtless, grown up, and performing wandless magic, Hermione felt a warmth grow inside.

When he lay back down, resting his head on her thigh looking up at her, he reached up with his left hand and brushed her cheek of a trail of tears. Hermione had not realized she was crying.

Leaning down, she kissed him awkwardly. "Thank you…thank you for…" saving me, she wanted to say. Instead, she said nothing and straightened, plucking the joint from Neville's bloodied fingers where she had not managed to clean with a spell before. She smoked the joint and looked into the fire.

At some point, she fell asleep sitting up, and when she surfaced again, it was to Neville laying her down before the fire, he Conjuring a wingback chair to sit near the kitchen door, watching over her. The room was warm enough and Hermione did not mind the hard, dusty floor.

When the first rays of day reached her through the diamond-paned windows, she woke to find Neville still shirtless and snoring softly in the chair. Hermione stood and stretched, finding that her black dress was nearly brown with dust. She felt her hair and found that most of the pins were gone, even one of her earrings was gone… Hermione cast a charm to straighten herself up a bit, and then went to the fireplace. Still set into the mantle was a little bit of Floo Powder and her moved her hand to make a call, but hesitated. She wanted to tell Harry, the only other person she could trust. Tell Harry what, exactly?

The events of the last 48 hours flipped through her head like a slideshow, and she sat down on the hearth and looked at Neville, his expression darkening as his eyes shifted under his eyelids.

Meeting with Blaise and the suggestion of looking into Liminality, then someone breaking into her office, no, before that, an invitation…then seeing Mr. Hornsby, the pack alpha who had tipped her off that Greyback was in Puzzlewood…then Lavender…then someone shooting Blaise Zabini in the chest, then Neville…the Patil twins hounding them in the reception of St. Mungo's…

 _What the hell was going on?_

Neville's dream must have turned bad because his hands began to twitch and the wound on his shoulder began to bleed through the bandages. Hermione rose and moved to kneel before him, a hand rising to brush a stray lock of hair from his sweaty face.

"Neville?"

He did not stir, his hands grasping the arms of his Conjured chair.

She moved between his knees to run a hand across his chest, along the dark line of hair between his pectoral planes, thick and wiry.

He made a soft grunt of a noise and his jaw tightened even with his chin resting on his chest.

"Neville?" she said again, plaintively. Her fingers ran down his chest to his tight belly and the muscles seemed to ripple like a cat's would when you stroked down its back. Neville's grunt turned to a soft groan and his hands relaxed their grip on the chair. Still, he did not wake, but as her forearm brushed the front placket of his trousers, something else did, and Hermione bit her lip and began to pull away.

She knew Neville, but she really did not…to touch him this intimately was not her place. She had not touched a man intimately in some time and that last man had been shot in the chest…let alone be touched herself…

Hermione began to stand when suddenly Neville's hand shot out quicker than a Seeker's and grabbed her wrists. She gasped and Neville was suddenly holding her, his wand suddenly in his hand, and his voice calling out sharply. His chest rose and fell rapidly under her shoulder. Hazel eyes were wide and the grip of his hand around her shoulders was pinching.

She realized he was startled by something in his dream, had grabbed her to protect her, and was about to cast at nothing.

"Neville…Nev…" she whispered tightly, and tapped on his chest even as his raised right arm and shoulder began to ooze blood through the bandages.

Seeing that there was nothing but dust motes floating in the morning light, Neville's arms fell limp and his breath came out slower from his open mouth. Hermione sighed as his body relaxed and he lifted her slightly so that she sat properly on her lap.

"I thought…I thought it was Lestrange…I thought it was…" he gasped, his wand falling from his fingers to clatter to the floor.

Hermione nodded against his good shoulder, and sighed. "It's okay…you're okay, Ne—"

He kissed her then, soundly, and Hermione let him. He was feverish, sweaty, and smelled like a mixture of sandalwood aftershave, old dust, and his cigarettes. His mouth was stale, but she didn't care as he grasped her chin and held her tighter. Hermione's left hand splayed across the plane of his chest, feeling blood, but she didn't care.

This was Neville Longbottom, Neville _bloody_ Longbottom, kissing her like she was a goddess to be worshipped. It made her toes curl.

When he broke the kiss, it was because he had fainted, and Hermione, alarmed, jumped free of him and considered what to do next. It was her turn to take care of him.


	6. Chapter 6

The house was not completely empty, and Hermione had found several things in an ancient pantry in the kitchen—tinned food, linens, and happily, a few household first aid potions. Upstairs there was an intact bedroom, and that was where she Levitated him, cleaning the room with a few household Charms, renewing them after at least a decade. The bed was built into the house, carved out of luxurious red oak with ornate oak and wheat sheaves decorating the posts. The mattress she had to Charm several times before it smelled clean.

Hermione tended to him until the ache in her stomach became too much to bear, and she opened a few tins of fruit and soup and heated them in the ancient kitchen, every modern convenience obviously removed. It was only over the mantle in the central room, in the daylight; Hermione saw any evidence as to who the house belonged to. Carved on a beam in the wall were the Longbottom family crest and the motto 'Tutum Te Robore Reddam'. Hermione smirked.

 _I will give you safety through strength._

Neville's fever broke after Hermione helped him eat some broth, and he slept through the rest of the day. Hermione meanwhile laid a few wards about the house, finding that the eastern side the house, a side parlor, another bedroom and most of the attic had been damaged. Only the massive oak tree on the eastern side seemed to give that side of the house some shelter from further decay.

The house was set atop a low hill surrounded by thick forests, no roads in or out, and as Hermione stood beside the oak, she felt old magic running through the soil and the heather that had taken over the hillock. She found it sad, the abandonment of a home that had been home to generations of Longbottoms, and she wondered why Neville had not taken the house as his own.

She considered the Floo again toward later midday, hesitating to check if it was still connected to the network. The sound of Neville moving down the stairs made her stop and look up at him as he bent down to clear the low ceiling.

"It should still be…" he said, as if reading her mind again. "We should call Harry."

Hermione nodded, noting that Neville had Transfigured something into a simple white cotton t-shirt. He looked better, rested. He moved by her, barefoot, and taking up the Floo powder made the call. She studied his wide shoulders and the bandages about his right shoulder. His russet hair fell toward his shoulders in slight tangled waves, and she had an urge to touch it.

Harry answered from Grimmauld Place, and Hermione realized it was after hours on a Sunday. At the sight of Neville, Harry's green tinged face seemed to relax.

"She's with you?" Harry asked before anything else was said.

"Yes, she's here. How is it?"

Hermione frowned and moved to kneel next to Neville, confused.

"We were there just as the shots were going off, startled a few witches in the gardens, but…"

That was the scream Hermione had heard.

"…but we were not able to find the Patils. Zabini was taken to a private Healer and we've not been able to locate him since. Lavender Brown gave a statement, but we had to let her go…"

"She doesn't," Hermione started and then Harry turned his disembodied head in her direction. "I don't think she had anything to do with whatever this is…"

"I don't either. She's barmy, but I don't think she would do anything like plan an assassination or try to kill an Auror…"

"You okay?" Harry asked, dark brow furrowing.

"Caught one, but luckily I had some help," he said glancing at Hermione who fell back from the green fire. She leaned against the side of the mantle and listened.

"We were able to ID that Jane Doe…a squib named Natalie Burns, and Theo Nott's girlfriend."

"Was she?" Hermione whispered, remembering what she read about the American Chloe Williams.

"No, she wasn't," Harry answered softly.

"As to the Patils, we haven't been able to track down anything that seems out of the ordinary about them. Parvati has remained close to Lavender. Her dress making business in Hogsmeade is doing well. Padma was working as a Healer at St. Mungo's until recently. It seems she was working at Ilvermorny for a year or so, filling in for the on-site Healer during her maternity leave. Lavender's financials are a mess, and it seems that Parvati has been helping her quite a bit. We're still digging into Zabini and the others were questioned at this fundraiser."

"Was anyone detained?"

Harry nodded. "A few fugitives, so it was not a complete waste of time."

Neville sighed. "Suggestions?"

Harry seemed to contemplate, his green eyes greener in the Floo flames. Hermione pursed her lips.

"Stay put, disconnect the Floo. Your flat was tossed, Neville, and Hermione's house. I know where you are, and until I can get the Patils and some answers, you're at risk…

Hermione…"

Hermione moved to the Floo, and Neville backed away, taking some silent cue to give them privacy. He padded into the kitchen, and drawing his wand, began to do a deep cleaning.

"Lavender…she said that they wanted you, whoever 'they' are. We were not able to get much out of her. Anything you can tell me?"

Hermione shrugged. "No, nothing. She said the same thing to me, and then Blaise…he said something about it being a mistake that Neville and I were there. I-I don't really understand, but it has something to do with me and Ron and Puzzlewood…"

Harry closed his eyes and frowned. "How?"

Hermione shook her head, her curls falling from the last of the pins in her hair. "I-I don't know. I can't remember everything; you know that Harry, you saw my Penseive testimony…"

Harry opened his eyes, his expression pained. "I know, but you and I _both_ know that there were things your mind could not seem to accept seeing that night."

Of course not, she wanted to say. She had witnessed the man she loved being torn apart…

"I'm not like them, Harry, I'm not afflicted, I was not bitten, _I am not like them_ …" she whispered angrily, and immediately had a flash of a recurring nightmare—her skin breaking open to reveal black fur underneath.

"I know, Hermione, I know, but if it has something to do with that night, they, and whoever they are, believe something else…"

"And they are not above trying to kill me to find out?"

Harry shook his head. "We're working on it, we'll find out. In the meantime, lay low, I will come myself to get you in a day or so…"

Hermione nodded and the Floo call ended with a whoosh.

Why was she and Neville invited and by whom? And why had the Patils tried to hurt her? They had certainly hurt Blaise and Neville, but why? It made no damn sense to her. She could not really remember the last time she had seen either sister. It was not as if she were close to them, the only other female she had been close to was Ginny, and Hermione winced, not even thinking of her extremely pregnant friend while Harry was on the Floo.

That was just how her life was…disconnected from most everyone and everything. It was partly a conscious effort, Hermione knew. There were just so many people who had meant so much to Ron, and cared for Ron. It was too was much of a reminder that anything that was had no connection to Ron was novel. Perhaps that was why she had allowed herself to have something resembling a relationship with Blaise Zabini.

Blaise had been a godsend after she went back to work…after Ron. She had not known about his affliction, and when he came to her offices hoping to have some Ministry representation for a member of his pack accused of petty larceny in Diagon Alley, suddenly she was able to do something that had nothing to do with Ron.

She loved Ron. She would _always_ love Ron, but that night in Puzzlewood had shaken everything she believed about herself and replaced her innards with something confusing and painful.

Blaise Zabini had, in a way, saved her life. It was a year later that she went out with her old schoolmate in an unofficial capacity, and it was only a week after that date that she was in his bed at his posh flat.

It had been…refreshing, and it had only lasted about a year before Hermione felt uncomfortable, ethically. That had been four years previous, and since then, her relationship with Blaise Zabini had been professional and friendly.

What was happening? Hermione brushed her curls from her face and sighed. Perhaps if she had been a bit more involved with people beyond Harry and Ginny, she would have some idea why the Patils were toting guns.

It was madness.

Hermione sat on the hearth stone and hugged herself as the memory of the night before flooded through her. She had felt useless, again. Ever since Puzzlewood, something felt wrong inside, like something was blocking her true self, something was wrapped about her like…like…thick, soft, dark fur, a trap she was too complacent to escape.

"The property is Unplottable," Neville said moments later when Hermione entered the kitchen looking rather tired. "My grandfather was a bit of a paranoid bugger, only a Longbottom could Apparate right into the house itself. Anyone else would end up in the river about ten miles away. Damn, I should have told Harry about that…"

Hermione smirked. "You're feeling alright?"

Neville had opened the windows of the kitchen and let fresh air in, and Hermione marveled at the wonderful light that came in over the sink and counters, the kitchen fireplace and fixed plank table in the middle of the space.

Neville looked very much at home, and she remembered, it _was_ his home. He nodded. "I'm sorry about this morning…" he said rubbing the back of his hair through his thick mane of hair. "I…I have dreams."

Hermione nodded. "I think we all do…"

Neville nodded back and then studied Hermione in her abused dress and scuffed shoes. "There's a bath…through there," he said pointing at a tiny door off the kitchen, one that Hermione had not noticed set into the wall behind the fireplace. "Added on later, if you haven't noticed this house is a bit…"

"Ancient?" she provided with a small smile.

"Yeah."

"Okay."

Neville watched her go to the door and through to the room that was still in working order. He smiled at her as she closed the door behind her and he heard after a few moments running water. At least some things still worked, and he set his jaw, wondering what he could about closing up the east end of the house where his bedroom had been and the parlor where his Gran let him set up his plants and books on Herbology. The central rooms had been his Gran's, the west side was the kitchen, the east side had been his, and he felt it strange it had been that part of the house that collapsed.

The day was warm and the breeze was fragrant, and Neville walked around the house, noticing that Hermione had set a few wards of her own. Then standing beside the rubble of the east side, Neville began working. Lifting his right arm was painful, but Neville pushed through and managed to re-enclose the downstairs parlor. The materials were still imbued with magic, and with the proper wards, should hold together for years to come. Moving around the corner of the house to start with the next story, the scent of soap and the sound of water splashing caught his attention. Looking over his right shoulder, causing him to wince, he could see right in through the opened bathroom windows, and to Hermione Granger sitting in the slightly sunken tub in the modernized bath—incongruous with the rest of the house. She was facing to the north, through another set of windows, oblivious to him looking in through the east windows.

Soap suds trailed down her shoulders where she scrubbed her hair, down her scarred ribs and the sides of her full breasts. He watched her turn, not seeing him through the steam, revealing the full extent of her scarring to his view. The scars ran down under the water, surely toward her hips, puckered and purple, ragged. When she leaned back to lie in the water, Neville turned away, moving back around the corner of the house to repair the upstairs. But he had to sit down, feeling suddenly very faint; all of his blood rushing down into now ragged trousers.

She was beautiful; and Neville resisted the urge to touch himself, to release the pressure that was continuing to build in his groin.

It was not as if he were some monk. He was no virgin, but he was also not the dating type. The closest thing he had had to a girlfriend was Hannah Abbott, but it was more about just 'fucking' than anything else. She didn't like his cigarettes or his bad dreams, and he didn't like her voice or the way she seemed to be fixated on his old classmate Seamus Finnegan even after all these year.

Of course, the last time he had been with Hannah was at New Years.

Neville groaned, and reached for his cigarettes, finding the case gone. He stumbled to his feet and moved to the oak tree, a tree that he had climbed often as a child and pressed his back into the thick, ancient trunk. He faced out toward the forests, and rubbed the back of his hand against his tight trousers, groaning.

It was the excitement, the adrenaline, and old childhood crushes, maybe. He had always liked Hermione, ever since the train ride in First Year…by Fourth Year, he was nursing a load of unresolved lovesickness…by the time she and Ron and Harry had disappeared during what should have been their Seventh Year, Neville Longbottom had much more to think about than crushes, even it if had been his first.

He rubbed again, and choked. He felt like teenager, a confused, bumbling teenager. With a sigh, his breath beginning to steady, he cleaned his trousers and stood, turning his attention to the house again. When he was done, it looked very much as it had when he had last seen it, and he wondered if anyone had any legal claim to it now.

For the moment, he and Hermione were squatting.

When he returned to the kitchen, Hermione was looking over the tinned food, frowning. "Soup or soup?" she asked, lifting two identical tins.

"Soup it is. Got the house closed up," he said as Hermione poured soup into an old, but clean pot and moved to the fire. There had been a more modern stove, but Neville figured it was removed during the estate sale. The large hearth in the kitchen was designed for cooking in mind during a time that modern conveniences seemed like, well, witchcraft.

Neville sat on the old bench by the fire Hermione lit with her wand, and Hermione sat the table while the soup warmed. She had Transfigured her dress into some sort of smock dress that covered her from neck to knee, leaving her thin arms bare as well as her calves. Her hair was down, untamed, but was lovely with tight curls haloing her face now scrubbed and clean.

"The Lestranges," Hermione began after their mutual silence, and the name made Neville wince. "…they are all gone?"

He nodded slowly, considering. "Their line is ended, their assets given to their known victims."

"Your family?"

He nodded again, crossing arms about his chest, hesitant to think about that part of his past. "Not that it was much, not enough to save this house…we owed a fortune to St. Mungo's."

Hermione apologized, moving to the fire again and Levitating the pot over to the table where she Conjured two bowls. She passed Neville a bowl of chicken broth and sat down at the table.

"Doesn't matter," he whispered before raising the bowl's rim to his lips and drinking. "I'm the last Longbottom, and some lines are meant to end, I think."

Hermione pointedly looked away, and sipped at her broth.

"I'm sorry…I'm sorry this had to be your last case before Hogwarts," she said softly.

"Me too…" he said, and then shook his head. "I mean, I'm glad to have seen you again…but…"

Hermione shook her head this time. "I get it. I should have been a better friend. We work only a few floors apart and yet I…"

"Yeah…"

They fell silent again, quickly drinking their broth. Neville watched her, watched her hands tremble as she finished her broth and Vanished her bowl. She stood unsteadily and moved toward the fire to extinguish it. She stumbled again and Neville moved just in time, Vanishing his bowl and catching her before she fell.

She smelled like white gardenia soap, something that smelled very different on her than it did his Gran. His Gran smelled like age and death, Hermione smelled like summer and gardenias… Lifting her up to her feet, he stood also, his hair brushing the low timbered ceiling. She was looking up into his face from over her right shoulder, his hands under her arms to hold her upright. When she turned, he leaned down and kissed her gently. It was a little awkward, his mouth catching the side of her mouth, but soon, their lips met properly and Neville felt a strange click in his chest, like a lock being opened.

Her hands pressed against his chest, not to push him away, but he wondered if it was to prove to her that this was real, that _he_ was real. His hand curved around the back her head, tilting her face toward his, and slowly her mouth opened and Neville tasted broth from her tongue and mouth.

The old kitchen seemed to tilt and Neville moaned, his belly and pelvis still coiled from his previous arousal and not-so-satisfying release. Part of his brain said it was madness to want to kiss Hermione Granger when they were in some sort of danger, but another part of him told that other part to be quiet. He wanted this. He had wanted this for years.

When her arms wrapped about his neck, he moaned inadvertently into her mouth and his arms found her waist, lifting her up easily. The change in angle relieved the soreness of leaning down, but still his right shoulder stung at lifting her. When she wrapped her legs about his waist Neville lost his balance and fell back into the stiff bench, breaking the kiss and banging his head painfully.

"Ouch," he hissed, and Hermione, who had ridden him down, snorted a laugh and apologized.

She started to pull away, to leave him, but before she could rise, he grasped her by the waist again and slammed her pelvis against his, a bold move, he knew. It surprised her and her mouth formed a slight 'o' and her eyes widened.

"Nev…" she whispered when he moved to kiss her neck, running his fingers along the hem of her dress. "We shouldn't…"

He hesitated at her pulse point. "Why?" he rasped darkly.

Hermione said nothing, but swallowed. Neville waited, waited for her to say it was unprofessional, or it was wrong somehow or that she didn't find him attractive or worth her time…

When she did not answer, he pulled away slowly and refused to look up at her eyes. When he started to remove her from straddling his hips, she grasped his wrists and kept him still.

"It's…it's just that I'm scarred up and insecure and I'm stupid and I don't know if this is-is the right time…"

He could not help himself when he started laughing softly, his lips trembling slightly from the adrenaline and her words.

"Wha-what is so…?" she said, her brow furrowing.

He surged up and kissed her again, taking her breath and forcing her to melt against him. When he broke the kiss to return to her throat, he whispered to her.

"I don't care about scars, Hermione, I don't care about how stupid you think you are… _you aren't_ …and what does it matter if it is the right time…we _have_ time…and I want…" he whispered, his fingers moving up her thighs.

The sun had begun to set behind the kitchen, and the light shifted, casting Hermione in a halo of summer sun. She ground against him on the bench and Neville growled softly.

"Let's…" she whispered, noticing his discomfort.

Only Longbottoms could Apparate in this house, and so Neville did right to the bed upstairs.

The Transfigurations on their clothes began to unravel as they pulled them off, and around the carved bed in the middle of the traditional Tudor room, the warmth of the sun lit their skin golden. Neville ran his hands long the scars on her thin body, and she hissed as finally her pelvis pressed into his. The warmth was amazing, and as Neville let her kiss along his chest, discovering the thin scars contrasted in the light, well healed wounds from the blasting hex at his hip, down to the nastier looking scar on his calf from catching a slicing hex during a previous run-in with Rodolphus.

Her back was to him then, and he moved up behind her to kiss the back of her neck, between her shoulder blades, then rolling her onto the bed, slotted himself between her thighs. Hermione's face was flushed and lips swollen with kisses, and Neville let his lips part to say her name as her hand brushed over his cheek.

Neville kissed her as he ran a hand down to her hips and across the line of a scar into her curls, warm and slightly damp. She hissed against his mouth as he traced her labia with a finger, and then groaned as he dipped down inside, gathering her moisture.

Hermione wrapped her fingers about his wrist to keep his hand in just that spot, and he indulged her, his own arousal hardening against her thigh. He licked at the perspiration at her throat and suckled at her pulse. Her voice cried out softly as he began thrusting his digit into her, then a second until the room was filled with a soft, wet sound that made Neville's arousal weep against her thigh.

"Nev…Neville…" she gasped and he felt her clamp down on his fingers, her mouth finding his in a bruising kiss.

The sun had set when he moved to kneel between her thighs and take in the sight of Hermione Granger in an afterglow of something he had done… She was beautiful, her eyes watching him through her lashes, her arms opening to welcome him.

When he slid the head of his arousal in, they froze, gazing at each other in the failing light. It was almost as if they were reconsidering, analyzing each moment that had brought them so quickly to that point. It was a mess of emotions, adrenaline, mutual regard, and pure physicality.

"Hermione," he whispered, his finger brushing a curl from her face. "Hermione…"

With a twist of her hips, Hermione drew him in and his forehead fell against hers and their eyes closed. The first full thrust and Hermione gasped, the next, and she cried his name, the third and he bit into her shoulder. The fourth never came.

The howling of wolves, dozens of voices, calling out made Neville freeze mid thrust. Hermione's eyes opened wide and slowly she pushed Neville away. The light had failed, and as Neville extracted himself reluctantly from Hermione and her body, he could feel the tingle of his wards beginning to fall.

"Accio!" he hissed, and his wand and clothes met him as he moved off the bed, his erection flagging.

Hermione hesitated only a moment and followed as Neville rushed to the windows and looked down into the overgrown garden.

"Oh my gods…" she whispered, her body beginning to tremble.

There were a dozen or more shapes standing in view of the bedroom windows, but what interested Neville more than anything else was the shape that was standing on the doorstep of his house just below the bedroom.

It was a huge black dog, hackles raised, enormous teeth barred and red eyes glowing like hellfire, forcing the intruders back..

"What is that?" Neville breathed even as he began slipping into his trousers.

Hermione had not dressed, but held her dress and her wand limply at her side. Her eyes moved to where Neville was looking, and suddenly she was falling to the floor in a heap.

Neville frowned and tried to catch her before her head hit the hard, worn floor, but it was too late. And then the wards fell.


	7. Chapter 7

The wolves he had heard were indeed wolves, not werewolves as far as he could tell, but _real_ wolves. A real wolf had not been seen in England in centuries, but as Neville was forced to leave Hermione in the bedroom, warding the bedroom door behind him, he found himself fighting against the very thing on the narrow stairs. When the wards fell, a part of Neville stung, and then he was physically fighting off a wolf.

He could hear windows smashing in the kitchen and in the empty and repaired parlor. There were shouts and then as Neville managed to get a bared foot in the soft belly of the wolf, kicking it down the stairs, he began hexing with pinpoint accuracy. The wolves were harder to pick off as they struggled to reach him on the stairs, but the human figures were easy to hex and stun.

As darkness fell darker, Neville knew he would not be able to fight off an army of wolves and men as he was forced up the stairs as hexes and stunners began flying toward him, slamming into the walls around him.

When a stunner grazed past his injured shoulder, Neville grunted and stumbled on the old worn carpet runner in the corridor in the middle of the upstairs. Then three wolves jumped up the stairs and he was torn—run to the bedroom where Hermione had fainted, or draw them away.

A voice shouted from below and suddenly the door to the bedroom opened, and a wolf turned, snarling, yellow eyes glowing.

"NO!" he shouted and the wolf turned its attention back to him as Hermione stood in the doorway. It took a moment for Neville to realize a glove hand was wrapped around her throat, a throat he had just had his lips upon. She was nude still, her curls falling down over shoulders and face. He could tell by her eyes that she was not quite conscious.

The wolves began advancing toward him and he stunned one wolf while another lunged. Then he felt a presence behind him, and Neville glanced back just as Hermione began to shout his name, and Neville saw the sole of a large boot. The world tilted then, and he heard Hermione scream and then stop in a strangled gasp. The sound of a bodies falling to the floor made Neville blink as he heard snarling, different from the wolves, and then Hermione was lying next to him, golden brown eyes wide and leaking tears.

"…stun it! For fucksake, stun the beast!"

"Don't…move…" Hermione whispered as suddenly a huge paw, black, stepped between Hermione and Neville's eye line.

Neville felt ill, knowing, in a distant part of his brain, he had a concussion, and he could feel his injured shoulder tear loose and blood beginning to ooze where the stunner grazed him. He did what Hermione asked, and kept still as above him a beast growled low and long over her. There was a strange odor, like grave dirt and burning leaves.

Hermione's nose was bleeding, and her eyes closed as the voices of men sounded all around them, and when a stunner hit Neville in the back, ricocheting off whatever was standing over Hermione, he saw and heard no more.

His head was splitting and his mouth was as dry as the desert. Everything hurt, and it had been a long time Neville felt so rough.

"…hear me, Nev?"

The voice was distorted, echoing through his brain.

"I need to know you are…"

He was lying on his belly, his head and right arm hanging over an edge…the air was damp, and musty. There was light coming from somewhere, but it was a cool light, early morning, and there was a strange warmer flickering.

Hands were touching him, small, gentle hands that smoothed his brow, over the swelling in his face. He could feel subtle magic suffusing his skin and muscles, and it was warm and calming. There was still pain, but it was tempered, and slowly he began to become aware of the heavy manacles around his wrists.

"Nev…please…open your eyes," she whispered urgently.

And he did, finding she was sitting next to him in a large room. It was mostly empty, and he was lying on a ruined bed, the tick mattress mildewed and old. The room was dusty and disused, but by the plaster décor, it reminded him of a fancy manor house room left open to the elements. The three sets of French doors were boarded over, a corner room, and the light he had noticed streamed in through cracks between the boards. The room had a door, but he could tell by the latch it had a new lock and surely several wards. There was an antique wash stand in a nearby corner, and oddly enough, a simple and small Muggle electric lamp that was lit that was the source of the warmer flickering.

Neville jerked, lifting himself up from the bed, startling Hermione who slipped off the bed and thumped into the dusty floor. He stood and scanned the room again, noting the water stains in the plaster and the mold on the papered walls. Slowly, he got control over his panting and looked down at Hermione who was shuddering, cuffs about her wrists and chains running to a ring set in the middle of the floor of the room. His own chains were set there as well.

When he lifted her to her feet, finding that she was dressed in an ill-fitting under slip of beige. The top was too large and it barely covered her chest.

"Are you…?" he started and winced, his shoulder twinging again.

The bandages were clean, but he was still not healed properly. A proper Healer would have knitted the wound in no time, but neither he nor Hermione were proper Healers, and in the indeterminate time that he had been unconscious someone had seen to the wound, but not healed it.

"I-I'm okay," she whispered, "Are you? They…they hit you in the head and stunned you…"

Slowly they sat down together on the bed, her hands in his. She pulled a fettered hand free of his and swiped hair from his face, and Neville winced.

"Headache, shoulder…but okay. Is there water?"

Hermione nodded. "Clean water. There's food on the shelf under the basin, just basic bread and fruit. There's a waste bucket behind that screen…"

Neville turned his back to look behind him, finding indeed there was a dusty oriental screen. The bed was only just wide enough for the two of them, he figured, and the basic things like food and water were provided.

"How long have we been here?"

Hermione did not know, and instead ran a hand over his chest, which was bare. Neville found that he had on a pair of slightly too small denims and a pair of dragon hide boots that just fit.

"A few hours at least, a day at most…I-I just woke a bit ago. You were in and out. I-I don't know where we are…but I hear the sea, or I think it is the sea. I just…" she stumbled and her eyes filled with tears. "This is all my fault."

Hermione Granger crying, weak, was not something he liked, and he pulled her near, burying her face in his chest. He began studying the room again, even though his head pounded, he could sense wards on the boarded up French doors, on the door out of the room, even on the chains. Hermione's cry began to fade and he realized that she had fallen asleep against him. He eased her down, letting her lie on his uninjured left side. He lay down with her, holding her close, listening over the pounding of his heart in his ears. Neville could feel that something was impeding his magical ability. He knew what it felt like, this impediment, having experienced such a thing as a child without knowing what it was… He tried a few wandless spells, and nothing happened. As far as he knew, his wand was still at his house, knocked free and most likely in pieces. It galled him. He was an Auror, and not to have his wand…

He was the failure he always believed himself to be.

It was also the chains. The manacles acted as some sort of barrier that trapped his magic inside. He could feel it swirling around just behind his eyes. Or, it was the concussion.

At some point he fell asleep, pushing the pain aside. He did not recall dreaming, but knew he had not slept long when Hermione's screams woke him. He realized she was still against him, but clawing his chest. She felt as though she was coated in sweat and as he understood what was happening, held her tighter as her screams and fighting began to calm as he did the only thing he could think of—hum. It was not melodic, but it was a deep hum that he hoped told her dreaming self that he was there, holding her.

"Nev…?" she whispered.

"Yeah, I'm here…"

The only light came from the flickering lamp, no more light shone through the boards, it was night.

"I was dreaming of the big black dog."

"Black dog?"

She nodded against his chest, her voice small and childlike. "It comes to me in my dreams, usually, and it is clawing me to death…"

Neville said nothing, but ran his left hand down her back. Lifting his hand up, he came back with traces of blood. Neville moved quickly, and Hermione gasped as he stood her up, turning her seeing that her scratches were oozing blood, not a lot, but enough to color her borrowed shift and his hand. When Hermione saw the blood in the flickering yellow lamp light, her knees gave out and once again Neville caught her, laying her on the bed.

"Tell me more about this dog," Neville whispered, trying to distract Hermione from the blood. "Is that what I saw…?"

Hermione was licking her lips, looking very pale. He believed she was going into shock.

"At your home?"

 _Your home,_ the words sounded strange to him, especially since very little that he knew of the house was there.

"I think it is what I saw…"

Hermione's eyes were very wide, and Neville moved to the washstand finding a white plastic cup behind the basin and pitcher. His chains rattled as he poured what smelled to be fresh water, and rattled again as he moved around to the side the bed and helped Hermione drink. She seemed to calm at his touch and the drink.

The lamp flickered out and Neville believed her eyes glowed for a moment, an eerie red, and then the lamp came back on and he knew he had a slight concussion.

"I think…" she began. "I think it is a black dog…as in a capital 'B', capital 'D' Black Dog."

Neville frowned. Her behavior was strange, as if she was the one with a concussion.

"I've seen him across the river from the house, watching the house, they can't cross rivers, you know…"

He did not.

"I think that is what scratched me in Puzzlewood."

"What do you mean?"

Hermione licked her lips again and reached out to touch Neville's hand holding the cup and he offered her another drink. When she finished drinking, her eyes implored him to let her say no more, but with a sigh she began what appeared to be a recounting that caused her mental and physical anguish.

"I remember Greyback killing Ron. I remember seeing his eyes go flat and then when Greyback moved toward me, something stopped him…something attacked him. It was a dark, but something began to attack Greyback and he fought. I was hurt, Greyback had hexed me, shattered my arms, my hands, and I was working so hard…so hard to try to cast, use my wand…" she whispered, her eyes sliding shut, her body trembling. "When he turned to me, stalked me down while I tried to crawl away, something attacked him, and I think I passed out… It was only a little while and when I came to, Greyback was dying, being mauled by a huge dark thing…darker than the dark. I tried to use my wand again, and I think I cried out, bones splintering through my arms, the thing turned… Its eyes were red fire, like looking into hell, and then it was on me."

She was crying again, silent shudders and tears squeezed out between her lashes.

"It sniffed me and pawed at me, tearing my clothes, my skin, turning me onto my back until I was forced to stare up into its face. I saw hell in its eyes, I think. It frightened me at first, but then…I wasn't, and I was…I don't know…I was…"

She reached for Neville and he took her hand, opening her eyes.

"Then Greyback was hexed, stunned, tied up, and I was sitting against a tree, screaming…screaming when Hornsby and his pack found us."

Neville blinked his gaze away from Hermione, and set the cup on the floor before turning back to run a hand across her cheek. He recalled what Hornsby had said— _there were more dangerous things in Puzzlewood than Greyback_.

Slowly, Hermione moved, her chains falling over her lap until she embraced him. "That's why I think this is all my fault…and I think they are listening…"

Neville sighed. He could not see a direct connection, not really, and he just assumed they were being watched. But if Hermione were right, he was just in the way—they wanted her, for what he was not sure yet.

They lay down again, arranging their chains so they were not tangled. Slowly, in the quiet, they slept again. Once again, Neville did not recall much of his dream. He thought he was at the Longbottom House again, lying on his belly in the sunny eastern parlor, surrounded by pots of all the plants his old Uncle Algie sent him before he passed away before the War.

It was a rare pleasant dream, even more pleasant when he would surface just enough to know that Hermione was curled warmly against him.

Morning came again, and Hermione was washing herself at the washstand, nude. Neville watched her in the flickering lamplight as the sunlight through the cracks began to change the ambiance in the room. He knew she was aware of his observation, her eye catching his in the mirror over the basin.

Hermione wiped away the dried blood with a towel hanging on the side of the stand. The metal fetters about her wrists were chaffing and her skin looked pink and irritated. She wiped around her face and hair and Neville saw her skin pimple up.

His shoulder ached, but it was no longer oozing blood, and he sighed feeling that his groin was going to rip through his ill-fitting denims. He mentally cursed himself for his own masculinity and his want for her… Neville closed his eyes and tried not re-adjust himself lest he just make it worse.

"Neville…" she whispered, and the rattle of chains and the soft indentation on the ruined mattress signaled her return to him and Neville opened his eyes. He felt odd, being half dressed, and odder still looking over at Hermione Granger, naked.

She smelled like blood, old blood, and faintly of the white gardenia soap.

Kissing him, her hair tickled his stubbly cheeks, and he sighed as his hands wrapped around her upper arms. Hermione froze, and he knew she believed he was going to push her away. Instead, he pulled her nearer.

He wanted to tell her that it was not her fault, none of it. He wanted to tell her that she was so beautiful. He wanted to tell her that he was so sorry that she had had to suffer. He wanted to tell him that he wished they could just have dinner together, be normal. And he wanted to tell her to hurry and open his denims…

Their chains, heavy and in the way, tangled about their legs as Neville moved to turn Hermione's back to the mattress. He struggled with his boots first, then the denims, but soon was free of them but not much else as her thighs tightened about his waist. Hermione's breathing hitched as he moved down her body, and ran the tip of his nose over her scars to her core. Her fingers found hair, and dug down to his scalp as he nuzzled against her pelvis.

She tasted like Hermione, an impossible thing to explain, he realized, but it was not unpleasant and it was not like honey. It was her, and she was wet. He lapped at her, pressing his nose to her bundle of nerves, the button that would unwind her, and after his jaw began to ache, he moved to that place and sucked…hard.

Hermione cried out, her back arching off the bed, and Neville grinned against her.

Chains rattled and slid over her legs as he crawled up her body and kissed her, tongues fighting, her voice trapped in her mouth as he did not hesitate to thrust into her body. Neville was the one who was forced to break the kiss, groaning as he reached up to grab the headboard of the bed and dig in deeper as her legs wrapped about his waist, angling him deeper…

She clawed at his back as the rhythm they had not been able to gain previously was established, brutally.

Hands moved to plant on either side of her head, Neville held himself above her, watching her face go through the rise and fall of orgasm. It was sublime. When her eyes met his, her mouth moved to say his name. Chains slithered over his back from her shackles and slowly she reached up to his neck and pulled him down so she could kiss him and breathe through his mouth.

"Please…" he thought she said, but still she plundered his mouth.

The bed creaked and scraped across the uneven wooden floor, and Neville shook his head, breaking the kiss as the coiling low in his belly finally sprung and he tried to pull away, only managing to slip out of her clutching body to cum in the tightness between their bodies.

"Hermione…" he whispered as she stared up at him, lips trembling. She sighed, and he could feel her whole body tremble with the come down of orgasm, shivering with cold, shivering with delight.

"Nev…Nev…I…"

The door banged open then, their manacles and chains melted away, and before Neville could begin to think to fight, he was torn away from Hermione, who was being pushed down by figures whose heads were wrapped with gray gauzy fabric that matched their robes. Her eyes flashed like flickering flames as the door was slammed and Neville was carried, two men under his shoulders, two men grasping his kicking feet. He was shouting her name, trying to fight, when the one figure that had his injured shoulder squeezed the gunshot wound and Neville saw stars.

It was hard to concentrate, but Neville tried to take in his surroundings even as he began to struggle again. He was in a grand house, or one that had been at one time. There was plastic sheeting and scaffolding in places, and the smell of fresh cut timber. He was in a house that was being restored, it seemed. Through wide, dark corridors, one of Neville's captors dropped his left foot and Neville kicked.

In what looked like a Louis XIV style living room, he found himself free for a moment, and he fought. He was wandless, but he was not defenseless. An Auror's training involved a fair amount of physical preparedness in martial arts. Neville had become quite good before he stopped practicing and became more of an investigator. There really weren't any Death Eaters to fight anymore. All the same, Neville had managed to knock one of his attackers out cold with a sudden jab to the face, and had broken another's arm. Meanwhile, his nose was broken and his shoulder was bleeding badly again. He fought in the dim light, body coiled to strike and ready to run back to Hermione.

And then, wands were drawn, and Neville fell flat on his back with a Petrificus Totalis. There was no fighting it, except that ever since First Year had had trained his mind and body to shake free within a few seconds…thanks to Hermione Granger.

He was lifted up again, under his shoulders, and dragged. Nothing was said, none of the men, and he figured they were men, made a sound. They dragged him down a narrower corridor and then down stone steps that curved, and halfway down, he was free again.

"Motherfu—" one finally said as Neville twisted and kicked one of the men down the stairs into the dark. He threw his left fist, albeit not his strongest, into the covered face of the other man and began to run back up the stairs.

He only made it to the top to come face to face with another hex, this time an Incarcerous around his chest, arms, and knees. Neville grunted as he fell to his injured right side and was quickly kicked in the face for the second time in as many days.

Distantly, Neville could hear her screaming his name, but he was being dragged down…down into the dark. By the smell of it, he was in a cellar, and there was no light except the firelight coming from a brazier under an arch between dark stone columns. It was a large cellar by the echoing of the chains and manacles being reapplied to his wrists. Forced to his knees, he realized for the first time that he was nude, having shucked the boots and denims during his lovemaking. The floor was cold under his knees, his wrists forced tight together as the hands that moved and fought him left him and a door was shut behind him.

Neville shook from rage on his knees, his eyes glazing over from pain and anger. He looked to the light, and ground his teeth as something behind the light began to move. Blood was dripping off his right elbow, sending a reverberating sharp sound through the indeterminable space. His breathing was ragged and came out in gasps. Then, there was another sound, a deep rumbling from the shadows beyond the brazier, and Neville's breathing faltered. The air was warm and stale in the cellar, but the floor was cold, and Neville knew that he would not be able to fight his way back her, to Hermione.

His vision swam; the blows to the head had made him feel the pull of blackness. He began to sway on his knees when the reverberating rumble sounded louder, nearer.

 _…can see you, boy…_

Neville sank forward, bracing his bound wrists and palms against the floor, and felt nausea course through him. He really _did_ have a concussion, and it was crashing through him to the point he was beginning to hallucinate.

 _…do you know why you are here, boy?_

He groaned, and in doing so, vomited what little there was in his stomach. Neville tried to wandlessly Vanish the foul bile, but he could not manage something so simple as that with the warded manacles. There was a chuckle, a deep, dark chuckle.

 _…listening to the wards and the spells, listening to see if I can get out…_

"Wh-what?" he muttered, falling to lay on his left side, too out of the moment to care about the odor of the vomit near his face.

 _…wards in this place, been testing them since they caught me, caught us…not bad…not good…and now they bring you to me…_

"Who are y-you?" he asked softly, moving his face back toward the brazier. "Where are you?"

It was behind him then, and Neville could just smell something strange through his broken and bloodied nose. The heat of breath against his twinging shoulder made Neville's breath catch again and he tried to lie very still.

 _…you might survive this…Neville Longbottom...but you have to ask me…give me…let me…_

"What? Let you what?" he rasped, his body shuddering, his legs curling up so that he moved into a fetal position. He closed his eyes as the breath seemed to scald his skin. It smelled like grave dirt, an odor he knew well enough finding the mass graves not mentioned in the press, graves where Death Eaters during the first rise of Voldemort had killed whole villages searching for the Potters…the Longbottoms…

"Hermione…you were in the house…"

 _…yes…_

It was chuckling and Neville felt the drops of salvia on his ribs and hips. It felt like scalding water.

 _…hit you hard, oh my yes…_

The voice was masculine, deep, familiar…

His voice.

 _…love her? Want to save her?_

"Y-yes…"

 _…then you will let me in? I can feast on that darkness in you…plenty in you…so much pain, so many bad memories…_

For a fleeting moment he could hear his mother screaming, his father screaming, and then Hermione. He was failing them, all of them, all over again…

Neville was not sure if he said yes, or if he shook his head, but the bite hurt, it hurt worse than the kick to the head or the broken nose. It hurt worse because the bite was in his wounded shoulder, and the blood, already tainted with infection, ran black.

The cellar seemed to shake around Neville, and he realized he was on his back, shouting his pain until dust rained down from the stone around him and the brazier tipped over, sending embers and fire across the floor.

Blackness took him then, and for once in a lifetime, he rested without dreams.

The hood was pulled away and Hermione saw only stars above her. Slowly her eyes adjusted as the sound of crackling fire and the warmth of light began to seep into her vision. Hermione had been forced to kneel in cool grass. At some point they had wrapped her in robes, giving her a modicum of warmth and modesty. But, they had bound her hands behind her back, bound her ankles with a short chain, and gagged her so that she could not even open her jaw. Hermione had been forced to calm herself to breathe.

They did not hurt her like she knew they were hurting Neville. Hermione could hear him fighting and shouting through the house before they managed to get the gag on her. She had tried to fight herself, but a well-placed knee between her shoulder blades had forced every bit of oxygen out of her lungs…that and the sudden binding of her hands behind her back.

Something in her wanted to rise up and destroy everything and everyone that held her down and was hurting Neville. Something dark, something that made it feel as if her back might rip open and something horrible would come out. The bag went over her head and she began to panic.

"Calm…calm down," a voice whispered and she could not tell if it were a male or female voice. "You won't be able to do anything just now…"

Hermione felt them lift her and drag her through dark spaces, past windows with light coming in, and through rooms—all this she could discern through the weave of the bag. Then she was laid down again, this time in a warm place, and her body was wrapped in robes.

"Sleep now…night comes soon."

And despite her hesitation, Hermione slept.

It was maybe for minutes, it was maybe for hours, but when hands touched her again, she woke. Hermione did not struggle as they walked her down cold floors until her toes felt grass and dirt.

There were about twenty figures around her, forming a circle around her. A brazier was set before her, and on either side stood Padma and Parvati Patil. Oddly, Padma had a horrible black eye and cut lip. Hermione let her eyes moved to the other figures, all hooded in gray, all wearing a sash with the symbol Liminality used on their chests. She was in a garden, but she could not tell if it was the same garden in Cumbria or not. Hermione had no idea where she was, and even as she lifted her eyes to the stars, they told her nothing.

The sound of bodies moving behind her brought her attention back to the terrestrial plane, and with a thud, Neville's body was tossed down into the grass unceremoniously to Hermione's left. He was naked, covered in blood and bruises, and unconscious. Hermione felt her heart began to thump heavily in her chest and she rocked on her knees, her bottom resting on her heels as she studied Neville.

He was bound, but his hands were in the front while hers were still bound in the back. Hermione watched as his back rose and fell slowly, and his hair rustled where it fell down into his face. However, as she assessed his injuries—broken right hand, broken nose, bruised ribs—her eyes fell upon the gore that was his shoulder.

"B-bitten…?" she whispered.

Whispers rose up around her and Hermione stiffened as a hand ran along her shoulder. She had not heard anyone move near, and soon her chin was pinched between fingers and her mouth plundered.

"We've finally come to this…" he said, pulling back, standing to his full height in the light of the brazier. He was not dressed as the others, not even the Patils were, who moved to Hermione's sides and released the bonds that held her arms back. The twins wore the same gray robes, but no sashes. "It was a long time in coming, wouldn't you say?"

Hermione winced as the muscles in her back and shoulders protested the freedom.

She considered trying to run, but to where? Leaving Neville behind was unthinkable. Instead she began to crawl toward him.

"No, no…" he said and the Patils seized her and pulled her away from Neville…Neville who needed protecting. She would not be idle again…

Hermione hissed as she was pulled back to where she had knelt, hands forcing her head to turn and look at him.

She had trusted him, and maybe that was her first mistake. All those years, she had needed to trust someone, and he had offered himself to her in the guise of setting aside old school rivalries. There was even a time she had considered his offer to date seriously. There was even the few times they had been together, he was so gentle and so attentive…and she had almost loved him and the way his fingers would trace her collarbone as he would croon soft Enrico Caruso love songs to her afterwards, always making her smile.

"I know you feel betrayed, I know you feel as though I have led you on," he whispered as he bent down and ran a hand over her cheek.

Her eyes burned as hot as the brazier only a few feet before her. When he grinned at her, his teeth white and perfect, she wondered how she looked to him in that moment. She had seen him shot by one of the Patils, seen him fall, and obviously was deceived. Her mind raced, trying to understand. With Padma's injuries, maybe it had been a mistake, maybe they had wanted to kill Neville or her…

"Everything we have was real, Hermione, it was necessary to get to this point, to prove once and for all that you…you…" he trailed, his dark eyes studying her face and slowly, he began to back away, his attention moving to something just behind she knelt.

Hermione felt fire against her back, and for a moment, considered turning to see what was behind her.

"See, my friends, do you see it?" he whispered, a hand moving to gesture at something behind Hermione.

The circle of gray clad followers began to mutter louder, and press nearer. Hermione shuddered and felt oddly faint as the Patil twins moved quickly away from her and moved behind him…

…Blaise Zabini.

"This is what I was telling you…possession."

It made no sense, what was coming out of his mouth, and Hermione looked down to Neville and the bite mark on his shoulder. What had bitten him? It was only the first quarter, maybe closer to half-moon…

"And now Longbottom is bitten…we only need to prepare and wait."

"Wh-what are you talking about?" Hermione stuttered, feeling very odd, very cold, and weak. Whatever heat her body had was against her back, leaving the rest of her body shivering.

"Don't break the circle, my friends, we should get started…" Blaise said addressing those in the robes.

Hermione fell onto her side then as she felt something tighten about her neck, her fingers moving to her throat and finding nothing there. It was some sort of magical garrote, maybe a sealing ward, but her consciousness wavered and she reached toward Neville.

"No!" Blaise roared and Hermione hesitated as her skull felt close to exploding. "Take their hands!"

She screamed as strange hands grasped her, but the scream was hoarse, a screech as her wrists and ankles were suddenly bound and she was twisted to lie on her back in the cold grass. Figures had also grasped Neville as well, but Neville was still unconscious.

The clanking of metal against metal startled Hermione and she watched as Blaise pulled something from the brazier. What she was seeing was not making sense to her, and Hermione knew she was about to lose consciousness again.

"No, watch carefully, and remember their faces, their names," a voice whispered to her, and suddenly her eyes opened wide. The Patils and others were holding Neville as Blaise held a smoldering branding iron.

When the brand was pressed into Neville's left palm and then the right, he shouted out, his eyes flying open. The eyes were blind, and did not see the stars above them or Hermione or the figures that struggled to hold him still. Those warm hazel eyes were not there, and were replaced by burning red orbs. Even as he mouth opened, his teeth were elongated, bestial.

The smell of burning flesh was heavy on the summer air, and Hermione whimpered as the brand was placed back into the brazier. She stared at Neville as slowly he returned to unconsciousness, eyes and mouth shutting. His fingers were curled around his brands, but he was held fast as if they feared he would fight again.

"Take him…"

She was screaming then, screaming Neville's name, and as they pulled him out of the circle, she felt as if a string was being pulled taut. Something connected them now, and to be apart from him…

"Now her."

The hands that held her, tightened, and Hermione felt as if she were about to burst into flames. Her entire body burned and she could feel sweat soiling the robes they had put on her…but it was not sweat and when the hands holding her were knocked away and the tightness around her throat strangled her, she could see the darkness crouching over her.

From her vantage point looking upside down at Blaise, she saw he had raised the branding iron up like a defensive weapon.

"Get back in the circle, you fools!" Blaise hissed, and the invisible garrote she felt returned and the shadow that stood over her was gone and she felt the fire shift back into her body. "Hold her!"

Hermione tried to fight, wriggling her body even as hands grasped her again, pinching and goading her to open her fists. She cried out as they eventually broke her fingers so she couldn't close her fists.

The brand into her left hand caused her to scream louder than she thought possible, and then the garrote about her throat tightened, cutting off her scream. The brand into her right hand was so horrible that she passed out, her eyes full of standing tears.

The blackness was so complete and in it Hermione felt safe. Something warm and soft curled around her body, and she was safe, protected. The pain was gone, and she wanted to believe that she could simply drift off into the dark into death.

"No…we do not die."

For a moment she thought she knew who had been speaking to her, like remembering a dream after years. It was a voice as familiar as her own, and it began whispering to her, softly, but Hermione did not want to listen yet. Somehow the scenario seemed very familiar as well, and she twitched in the black softness.

"We will rise and we will not be alone…"

Her mind was adrift then, and Hermione knew no more.


	8. Chapter 8

"It has been three days, Hermione, are you sure that Hornsby isn't sending us on a wild goose chase?"

Hermione was frying a ham steak on the camp stove in their enchanted tent. She said nothing as Ron finished laying wards around the campsite deep in Puzzlewood forest. She could hear him call to her from near the flap, and clearly hear the annoyance in his voice.

Things were tense, it was always tense when they had to work together, it seemed.

When Ron came back into the tent, brushing sleet from his cloak, he sighed, casting to stoke the small wood stove that heated the small tent. It was a smaller tent than what they had used years before hunting Horcruxes. Hermione finished preparing their meal and sighed as she set their metal plates on the small table in the middle of the space under a flickering lamp. Ron shrugged his cloak off and onto the back of the folding chair at the table. His hair was damp, and looked like blood when it was wet. It fell into his pale, freckled face and obscured his clear blue eyes. The scruff on his cheek was beginning to turn into a full beard, and Hermione imagined that he was not shaving to demonstrate his annoyance at their lack of a trail.

"Everything is so damn quiet, I am starting to think…" he muttered, snatching up his fork and knife and dug into his meal without looking at Hermione.

Hermione glanced to the sleeping area, to the two cots, and felt so weary that she wanted to fall face first into one of them. They had been walking and tracking for miles, and it had taken a concerted amount of energy to get the tent up for the third night. Even more to heat up food for their evening meal…

She was beginning to think maybe Ron was right, there was no evidence Greyback was in Puzzlewood. Then again, it was deep winter in the enchanted wood, and every living thing seemed to be taking shelter. That could include a fugitive werewolf. They had another week before full moon, and by then they would have to suspend their search. It was just too dangerous to hunt a werewolf at its 'moon time'.

Hermione hoped Ron would understand that.

As it was, they were barely speaking, and when Ron _did_ speak to her it was to vent his frustration. He had not wanted to track down Greyback, he did not want to have to work with Hermione. They had established long before that they did not work well together despite being engaged. They could only work together if Harry was with them, and Harry was still on honeymoon in America with Ginny. If it had not been for Greyback's attack during the last full moon and the reported sighting in Hornsby's territory, Hermione and Ron would not be in Puzzlewood.

It was just bad luck.

It was compounded by Ron's frustration and his reaction to his frustration. Thus the separate cot…

Ron ate like a beast when he was angry, while Hermione picked at her food. Soon his plate was empty and he stalked toward their water closet to prepare for the night. Hermione sat at the table and ate a bit more before drawing her wand from the sleeve of her jumper and Vanishing the rest of the uneaten food.

She sighed and leaned her elbows on the tabletop, resting her face in her palms. Hermione just wanted to go home, go back to their normal routine. There were things to be done at home—painting, refinishing the floors… It was to be their home, and they had hoped to be finished before the wedding. Routine dictated that she worked in the office, and Ron in the field and in the evenings that returned to Guy's Cliffe and worked on the house until it was time for bed. They worked well together when there was no danger.

Working together to restore a house was one matter, working to track down and apprehend a rogue werewolf was another.

His hands were warm on her shoulders, moving to knead her sore muscles. He had moved up behind her without her notice, and startled slightly at his touch.

"I'm sorry…I'm sorry…" he whispered and she knew what he meant.

It was not normally like this, she knew, Ron taking out his frustrations on her… They would argue, and they would bicker, but it was always something they got through in moments, maybe hours, not days…

He pressed a kiss at the crown of her head and slowly helped her rise to her feet. Hermione smiled softly at him, forgiving his behavior again and again, brushing her fingers over his freckled cheek. Together they moved to the beds and with a flick of the wrist, Ron Charmed the beds back together.

In the flickering lamplight over the table, they undressed for bed, moving to embrace under a familiar patchwork quilt by Molly Weasley. Ron's longer red hair tickled her cheek as she pressed her face against his shoulder and it kept Hermione from delving deep into sleep. It was bitterly cold outside in the dark of the forest, and though they had charmed the tent for warmth, Hermione could feel a draft coming in from the ground beneath them.

At her shiver, Ron pulled her closer, half asleep, half dreaming, but instinctually feeling Hermione's discomfort. When she had buried her nose against his collarbone and felt the pull of the fingers of sleep, Hermione went, sliding along a stream of comfort. Before dawn, Ron was snoring and Hermione shouted herself awake from a dream she could not recall fully.

It was not like her to have bad dreams. They had started ever since they entered Puzzlewood.

Sitting up in bed, quilt rolling back from her shoulders, Hermione stared toward the flap of the tent that was blowing gently. Snow swirled on the ground just before the flap, and there was nothing else. Ron shifted next to her, a hand moving to where her head had lain on her pillow. Finding her gone, his hand moved to touch her back where she sat and his touch through her nightshirt caused her to relax.

"Bad dream?" he mumbled.

Hermione looked at him out of the corner of her left eye and nodded. He was grinning at her, still mostly asleep. In the near dark, his blue eyes glittered between his long ginger lashes.

"C'mere…" he whispered, and Hermione glanced at the flap again.

Something had been there, she thought, something had been watching them through the flap, and maybe that was what she had dreamed. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, she laid down in Ron's open arms. He kissed the side of her face and settled back to sleep.

Hermione did not go back to sleep. She closed her eyes and tried hard to shake the feeling of being watched from her mind. She was not the sort of buy into vague intuitions or even dreams, but from that moment on, Hermione was on edge.

Hours later, toward evening, they had found a trail and following it, found Fenrir Greyback eating into the soft belly of another creature. He had not heard them approach it seemed, and it had taken only a split second's wrong decision to engage Greyback that changed everything for Hermione.

They called them fairy paths, Hagrid had told her long ago. It was worn, narrow trails in forests that usually led animals like deer or rabbits to water, but because the trails were so used, and oddly linear between gnarled ancient trees, they were called fairy paths. It was a silly thing; Hagrid told her, fairies would no more walk the forests than he would be able to tiptoe across the Black Lake. Fairies were fiction, even in the Wizarding world.

Yet, as they followed along the path between the ancient trees, Hermione could not help but feel that they should not be on the path. This trail was not meant for them. Maybe it was still the dream, or a feeling, but Hermione could not shake her hesitation as they moved quietly through along the darkened, at times snowy path.

The sound of fighting and growling had Ron stopping her near a huge pin oak tree. It was getting dark, and it was darker still under the thick canopy of interlocking limbs and branches. Yet, Hermione could see a few stars poking through the protection of the trees. Ron had drawn his wand, and doffed his pack, glancing back at Hermione.

The forest had not treated Greyback well, and in the small clearing that looked like a crossroads, what light was left in the day, he looked like he had just won a fight. His body was curled over a creature, and by the sounds and the blood dripping from Greyback's chin, was beginning to eat it.

Ron gave her one last look and nodded, but Hermione was more focused on the creature on the ground. It was big as a deer, maybe bigger, with long, lank black fur, and a tongue that lolled out of an enormous mouth. Whatever it was, its eyes were flat and dead, colored blood red. Living, Hermione wondered what the creature looked like.

Ron had shouted her name as suddenly curse fire slammed past her and into the ground. What was wrong with her?

Time dilated and shifted, and Hermione knew then they were not supposed to be on this path. It was meant for beings not of her type.

When the splintering hex slammed through her hastily cast Protego and the bones in her arms broke apart like shattering glass, time began to move properly again. She had never suffered the hex before and her wand slipped from her fingers and onto the snowy ground. She did not scream, did not make a noise, but fell to her knees as the hex began working its way up toward her shoulders before stopping.

Ron had shouted her name, but in doing so, faltered in his firing, the only thing that was keeping Greyback from physically attacking. As Hermione felt the blood begin to soak through her jumper and her cloak, she fell onto her belly and cried out softly. The next flash of curse fire blinded her and Ron shouted her name again as he was slammed back into a tree. The air was pushed out of his lungs in a visible puff of air, and immediately Greyback was upon him. A part of her brain was trying to qualify Greyback's strength, both physical and magical. Maybe it was because he was a werewolf, unrestrained and unrepentant in his cruelty, that he was able to overcome Ron Weasley, prime Auror.

As for her, she was not an Auror, and some sort of dark magic seemed to be working on her—how could she ever explain it?

Hermione was reaching for her wand, trying to push through the pain and the grinding of bone and flesh. If she could just reach it…

Ron's wand was snapped with a great swinging of metal tipped clawed hands and Hermione whispered Ron's name as blood arced through icy air. Her fingers were bloody, her legs kicking against the soil and snow, but not getting her anywhere.

Greyback grabbed Ron's cloak, twirling him in a dance of death away from the tree to slam his body down into the ground. Greyback's bestial face was black with blood, and as he tore into Ron's chest, Ron's large hand reached out for her. Bloodied lips formed her name as the life began to drain from his lovely blue eyes.

Hermione screamed as she tried to touch the handle of her wand.

 _No, please…no…_

When her fingertips brushed the Vinewood, Greyback snarled and turned his eyes to where she lay, helpless.

 _No, no…I can't…please…_

He was hideous, but more than she ever remembered. He wore rags and his eyes were black. When he turned toward her, blood dripped from his chin and down his chest. His teeth were filed sharp, and he wore metal tips on his fingers, all to make him seem more bestial during phase time. Surely in full form, he was just as hideous. Hermione wondered how anyone could be so terrible…and looked to Ron's pale face again.

How could she have been so useless? What was wrong with her?

 _Grab your wand and cast, you stupid witch!_

Greyback stood, a worn boot stamping into Ron's collapsed chest, and Hermione screamed, blinded by tears. He drew his wand and cast another hex, and Hermione could no longer move.

He was laughing, a horrible high laugh that made every nerve in her body sing agony and the blackest thoughts she had repressed out of the need to function came to the forefront.

"Imma gonna fuck ya…"

Someone called her the brightest witch of her age, _what a lie_. She was useless, completely and utterly useless…

"Imma gonna eat ya, girlie…"

The man she loved was dead, and it was her fault… She wanted to die too, but not before she destroyed the creature that called itself Greyback. She wanted to rip his jaws open with her bare hands and pull his tongue out through his maw. She wanted to rip his spine out through his neck and chew on the vertebrae…

"And imma gon-"

The sound that came from his mouth next was like that of a real animal, a cross between a scream and a howl. Hermione whimpered as Greyback floated up off the ground, his boots kicking to find purchase. Those black eyes bulged and his mouth flapped as a circle of blood blossomed at his bare chest under his coat.

Like a rag doll, Greyback was thrown, body bouncing off the ground, bones snapping with a terrible crack. What looked down at Hermione was indescribable, but it had eyes…two terrible eyes that were keyholes through to the doors of hell.

 _Ask me, ask me to kill it._

"K-kill it?"

 _He has killed me; he has killed your lover…_

Hermione's vision was dimming to the point that all she saw was hellfire. "No…no…can't be dead…"

She knew he was, but she still did not want to believe. The tears that streamed down her cheeks were from pain and terror, but as the burning eyes moved, so did the darkness until it was above her. One pain was replaced with another as claws sank into her back, using her cloak and flesh to roll her on the cold ground.

She could see the power of the beyond in its eyes, and somehow she knew what this creature was… Hellhound, barghest, black dog…

 _You are dying, Hermione Granger, but you don't have to…_

 _Let me in…_

The darkness was oozing into her. She breathed it in, felt it slip through her wounds and into her flesh, and slowly, bit by bit, the pain went away.

 _Let me in…_

The stars were beginning to shine down on her through the gap in the trees, and Hermione took a deep, gaping breath. Billions and billions of stars and as many miles, the universe in its vastness did not frighten her…death did not frighten her either.

 _Let me in…_

And she did, unable to formulate what else to do other than die.

 ** _We do not die._**

"I wish there was an easier way to get to this, I really do."

She didn't believe that, even as she was barely able to consign the pain to a corner of her being. When she opened her eyes she knew another day has passed, and though she was able to shield herself from the passage of time and the accumulation of pain, she still could feel the shift in the earth—another day had passed.

Hermione had fought them, though she could only recall fragments of it, watching the memories like a spectator. She was weak, her magical ability oddly in flux, but she fought to the point where they had broken her bones, bruised her muscles, and then hexed her until she was fully unconscious.

"I knew it when I met you again after Weasley died; I knew it then that there was something in you. Like calling to like, maybe?"

Her eyelids flickered, even they hurt. The light hurt her eyes; it was artificial light, harsh fluorescent strips in small room. She was sitting, slumped in a plastic chair, hands bound behind her back with what felt like plastic zip ties. When the wet cloth began wiping away blood from her face, she hissed at the icy water chilling her skin.

"All these years of meticulous research, the trials and the horrible errors, I think we have what we need…with you…and fortunately with Longbottom. So that was not a complete waste of time…"

Hermione groaned, she felt like she was burning up, and as her vision pulsed and blurred, somehow she knew that her broken limbs and bruised body was the least of her worries. She felt as though she was beginning to burn from the inside out.

 _No…it will pass._

"Blaise…" she whispered, her head lolling about loose on her neck.

His fingers brushed her shoulders and when he held her head in his hands, holding her still, she opened her eyes to see him clearly. He was not happy, it was clear in his expression. His eyes scanned her face, and when he drew nearer, Hermione choked as he pressed a kiss on her forehead.

"Why…?" was all she could manage, using too much energy to keep her vision from blurring again.

She was in what looked like to be a break room, odd. There were lockers along the wall to her left, a table set just to her right. There was a Muggle coffee vending machine, but everything was covered in dust, but working, worn. The sound of humming was all around her, even the lights hummed. Hermione could not smell much through the blood in her nose and mouth, but there was a hot metallic odor underneath the blood.

"Why?" Blaise repeated, pulling back, and Hermione saw that he was seated in chair before her, a basin of water on the table to her right. There did not seem to be anyone else in the breakroom, and Blaise sighed.

"Because it is agony to have to sacrifice a part of your life to something beyond your complete control."

Hermione shuddered as Blaise wiped her shoulders, the gray robes falling open and down her arms at his cleaning.

"I know you have never been out of control at any point in your life, Hermione, and I envy you that… Even with Wolfsbane, it isn't a picnic," he enunciated as he wiped blood from her shoulders and rinsed the cloth out in the basin. "So…I started doing research at school. I did it on the sly as much as I could, and luckily, I was mostly left to my own devices. Even when Snape left me alone…he never said anything when he would escort me to Hogsmeade to meet my mother so I could have to endure 'moon time' in chains in the comfort of my own home…"

Hermione was becoming more aware of Blaise and his words. He was wearing something different than the last time she had seen him. He was in a vest and shirt sleeves, rolled up to his elbows, unbuttoned from his throat. Blaise had told her years ago how he was able to keep his affliction a secret with the help of Hogwarts staff and his mother.

"But I was determined…there had to be a way to shift when I wanted, for as long as I wanted. There were creatures all over the world that can shift, and surely there was reason why and how. It took me years, but finally I found one…a creature of magic and power that _I_ subdued with my own ability…"

Hermione sighed as he wiped at her breasts and the bleeding scratch that had been a scar for so long. It was freshly torn and blood oozed slow and black down her chest to pool in her lap and the chair under her.

"I caught it in the Forbidden Forest only two years after Weasley was killed. It was pure luck, pure _stupid_ luck…"

Her breathing hitched as Blaise pushed the robes open to wipe at her waist and down to her hip. His eyes followed the scratch, his lips pursed as the heat from the wound pulsed under his damp cloth.

"It was so close to 'moon time', but I had always wondered what the Forbidden Forest was like. I was never allowed to enter it during school. As an adult, and with the right amount of money, I was allowed to traverse the ancient paths. I had fully planned to let myself go that time, forego Wolfsbane, and just be. I was tired, my research was going nowhere…and it was as if fate smiled down on me, and in the night, the moon so close to full, I met a Black Dog at an ancient crossroads deep in the Forbidden Forest."

She whimpered as his fingers brushed the inside of her thighs, the robes open before him and Hermione unable to summon the strength to fight. Instead, she was listening.

"I trapped him. The specifics aren't important, but I trapped him and I kept him for years in the cellar of my home. I had to become an expert at wards just to keep him from disappearing into thin air…and he did, from time to time, until I would find him again."

Hermione blinked at Blaise, feeling a bit more aware, and glanced down to where he brushed her knees with the cloth.

"You see, I tried to bargain with him, but I had nothing he wanted. I even distilled his essence…alchemically really…and tried to change myself. I experimented, but the female couldn't handle it, and oddly, burned. The males just shifted into some sort of monster…pitiful…and pointless."

"Sh-shot them…shot them both?"

Blaise sighed and rinsed out the cloth, and wrung it out. Instead of continuing to clean, he sat back in the chair, resting his hands on his knees. He regarded her, a comically disappointed expression on his handsome face.

"I had to. First to put the female out of its misery, and second to keep the monster from trying to run... It was a failure, both times. At least with Theo he managed to take on some of the characteristics before shifting back as an insane fool… I thought I had got it right that time."

When she slumped, her eyes getting heavy again, his hands grasped her face until they stared at each other again.

"It kept going toward you, Hermione. And when we were…were together and I saw your scars, I started to understand. You were marked, just like the old stories said. And you drew him to you, and every time he would manage to slip through the wards, it was to go to you…"

His fingers traced along her scars, across her breast and to her hip.

"Did you even know? Did you even see him?"

Hermione did not understand at first, the 'him' did not make sense to her. But slowly she recalled seeing the black dog lying on the bank across the river from the house, just watching the house—it was not often, but enough times for her to feel oddly ill at ease about it year after year. Then there was the dog lying on Neville's doorstep, the dog that stood over her as she and Neville were being attacked.

"Like calls to like…" he whispered, his fingers brushing along her thighs again. "And now I have you and Longbottom…now I can finally find a way to cure us all."

It was slow in coming, but part of her understood. The low, soft laughter that slipped through her lips startled them both. Yet, as his eyes widened and he withdrew his touch, the laughter grew.

"Y-you are an idiot."

Blaise's eyes narrowed then and slowly his expression darkened. When he rose, he pushed his chair back under the table. Hermione was smiling though her face hurt to do so.

When his backhand slammed across her face, Hermione saw stars, millions and millions of stars.

Hornsby was shouting at his sons to be careful and gag Greyback before he came to. Hermione was shivering as a wool blanket was wrapped about her and Hornsby's wife Agnes knelt next to her, trying to staunch the blood from her body with basic spells. There were half a dozen other men and women in the forest, light spells lighting the clearing.

"Miss Granger…Miss Granger?" Hornsby said, all the while motioning for a young woman to cover up Ron's body. "Miss Granger, did Greyback do this to you?"

Hermione was gone, she had stopped screaming, and she was gone. Wrapped in the safety and warmth of black fur, her consciousness was hidden deep inside. What made her shake her head and then try to rise to go to Ron was pure instinct. She did not make it a step, collapsing in a heap of blood, torn clothes, and broken bones in a werewolf's arms.

They carried her; they did not Portkey or Apparate. They carried her from the forest and through the night to Hornsby's cottage near the edge of Puzzlewood. They laid her down before the cottage's fireplace when Hornsby's grandmother came with family made Potions that knit her bones and closed the superficial wounds. Yet, when they pulled away her clothes, the men waiting outside as snow began to fall; the women of the Hornsby family saw the scratches, and fell still and silent.

It took days for the scratches to close with the salves and potions that would have normally erased an animal scratch in moments. Nothing was said, and Hermione Granger came to be at St. Mungo's, Molly Weasley crying and Harry Potter standing in the doorway of the private room.

"He…he died because of me," was the first thing she had said in days.

Molly was shaking her head, and Hermione was staring at Harry.

She felt hollow and detached, even when the funeral was finally held, Ron's body interred in the same barrow that held his grandparents. The Weasleys had lived at the Burrow for generations, and the barrow in sight of the house had always been where the Weasleys buried their dead. It was not something that the Weasleys talked about and until that point she had always through the hillock was just an anomalous geologic structure, as odd as the mish-mash that was the family home.

Bill and Fleur were particularly helpful; it had been Bill to help her and Ron to secure a loan from Gringotts buy the house at Guy's Cliffe. Harry was dealing with his own grief, and with Ginny who had just found out she was pregnant with their first child. Arthur and Molly had to deal with losing another child, and Hermione…she really had no one. No one to explain it all to, no one to confide in, and no one tell her dark dreams to…dreams that were becoming strange and violent. All she had was her guilt.

When their friends came to the Burrow—Luna, Seamus, much of Gryffindor House and Dumbledore's Army, and Neville—Hermione was in no fit state to deal with Lavender's ire. Hermione Apparated home, what there was of it, and started finishing the house alone.

Alone.

That was what she thought, what she believed, and after so many months, and so many years, Hermione had come to peace with it. It had been folly to try to capture Greyback without proper support, at least, that was how Harry explained it away. It was not Ron's fault, it was not Hermione's, it was just bad timing.

But deep down, in the safety of black, warm fur, and the heat of hell fire, Hermione knew it was just not bad timing, it was fate.

And then there was Neville, and maybe that was fate too.


	9. Chapter 9

_Now…July 7, 2009, 7:18 PM_

She came to just as the gray robed followers placed her on the catwalk above the whirring machinery. Blaise's lips moved, but she could not understand much of what he said.

"…watching…place removed from Muggle…tonight…sorry…"

He bent down and kissed her mouth again, and it was tender. In the late day sunlight that came down from an opening in the high roofline, his face was haloed in warm light. His expression was sad, but she could only feel building anger toward him.

 _I will tear him apart._

The footfalls on the metal catwalk banged away then, and she was left alone. No, not alone, as she turned her head on her neck and looked down through the grating to the floor below.

She was beginning to lose everything again (again?), and though it should have frightened her, she was more concerned about something else, something by far more dangerous. She was beginning to forget everything. She could feel it, just as she could feel her blood seeping through the wounds on her body. She was losing all the reasons as to why and how, she was losing her name and her past, and she was, with every drip by slow drip, losing her life.

Her body was battered and broken, and there was considerable pain, but it was nothing in comparison to the fear.

She could not run, stand, or even crawl. Her legs and arms were broken, ribs cracked, body bleeding from numerous shallow wounds—she was effectively crippled. Her state was purposely set so that she could not escape. It was déjà vu, somehow. Even her placement on a high catwalk over a piece of hot and whirring machinery was done purposefully, for below her, lying in between two pieces of moving machinery, was the thing she feared more than her slipping memory.

A patch of sunlight lit the concrete floor, oil and grease stained. Inside this patch of late daylight laid a man, a man she _did_ know. She was losing everything else, but she knew him, his name, his face, and she knew that she had grown to care more for him than anyone. She also knew that she was frightened of him, what was inside him, what he would become as soon as that blissful light that lit his bloody body would fade for night.

The roar of machinery did not wake him from his slumber, and she stared at his wide chest, ignoring the gashes, to see that he was breathing evenly and deeply. He was alive, more so than she was. Surely, her life would end soon enough. She was cognizant, but circling the proverbial drain.

She could not remember how she got to be at this place and time.

She was inside a building, a factory, she could only assume. What kind of factory and where it could be was one of perhaps a thousand bits of information leaking out of her mind along with her life? It was like a New Objectivity nightmare, but she was beginning to forget why she knew this or thought this...

She could not remember her name. She only knew the fear.

Something was going to happen to her when the sunset and the moon rose. Something more terrible that having her limbs broken and her blood spilt was going to happen. He, the man whose chest rose and fell to breathe, was going to do this 'something' to her.

She could not remember her name, but she could remember his, and by his very name, she had to hope that when he opened his eyes, he would remember everything in her place.

Neville, his name was Neville Longbottom, and something that remained of her was astonished that it was Neville Longbottom lying on the concrete floor, russet hair falling over his chiseled face, gashes marring his muscular body, large hands branded as hers were, crusted in scabs and pus and blood. A lifetime ago, she would never have imagined it would be Neville Longbottom…and lying bleeding and frightened, she was relieved it would be Neville Longbottom.

As the sun faded overhead she turned her face to the sky. For centuries, for longer, she had often turned her eyes to the stars. Sometimes she would see the design of the heavens, and sometimes she would understand. The centaurs had tried to impart their wisdom, but found it useless. What did a hound of hell need to know about the heavens? And what could centaurs care about the paths and gates to the underworld where the stars do not move and time meant nothing?

She blinked.

 _Was that what she was?_

The sun had set and the moon had begun to rise, and she knew in her broken body it was not full, not for days yet. All the same, she was dying, her body would not last unless…

She felt him wake far below her as the space grew darker, and she let her head roll to the side. Through the grating she could just see him out of the corner of her right eye, his body twitching, his eyes open.

It began slowly, the convulsions, and over the sound of the machinery, the snarling.

Part of her was becoming very frightened, very upset, as her body rolled on the grating so that she came to all fours. The tearing of flesh was horrifying to hear. Skin split open, blood sprayed, and muscle rent apart. The odor of death surrounded her, burning, hot death, it was unmistakable. Flesh began to slough off something dark and horrible underneath, like an insect pulling out of an old skin. The skin suit that was a human fell away, and in doing so, a wave of magic blasted off the thing it had become, denting the spinning drums and causing a high whine of failing machinery to fill the space. Even the catwalk was jolted and the popping of bolts made the metal grating shimmy and screech.

The following sound was enough to call the dead to rise, and perhaps that was what it was for.

 _Come dead souls, come and rise, I will lead thee to the Veil and the rewards beyond…_

It was a verse from somewhere, but it could not recall where.

Eyes of burning flame opened wide and the mouth that had opened to howl out a call closed. Slowly the beast stood to its full height, and like a beast, shook its fur and threw blood and sinew onto the floor far below and the broken machinery around it. Massive paws with bloodied claws lifted out of the gore beneath it.

Stretching, stepping away from the gore, a black nose rose to the air and could smell him, the man she cared for, and she could smell the man intended to kill. With a short bark, she ran, leaping from the catwalk and down to the floor, landing lightly on the concrete floor. Burning eyes scanned the figure on the floor and then looked up to the moonlight beginning to shine down from above.

He would wake soon enough and there was much for her to do before she could think of him and her desire to gnaw on the bones of the werewolf that had hurt the spirit inhabiting the man's body.

She had ever so much to do.

Most of his life he had felt powerless. It was not his fault though for years he believed it was some defect of his birth that he had no real mastery over his magic. When his parents finally died and his grandmother began to reveal why he had been kept from being what he truly was, he was only angry for a short while. In truth, he knew that growing up with the memory of his parent's torture would have warped his childhood and made him into a man beyond redemption…perhaps.

Even remembering as an adult hardened him, and he wondered if it would have been better to live almost like a Squib than to remember and resent.

And yet, all that mattered to _him_ was that he got revenge on the creature that had trapped him for years, and kept _him_ away from his task, from _his_ impetus. The night he had been caught, the vessel he had possessed was beginning to die. The wizard he had used to move into the world of the living was old, centuries, and already his magic was failing. If he had had the body of Neville Longbottom, the dark werewolf would never have caught him.

He wondered if it had been the same for the female that he could smell nearby. As he moved, jumping and running through the strange mechanical landscape, he stretched and felt out every nerve of his body. It had been an age since he felt so young, so free. Even the human inside him felt exhilaration as he flashed upwards toward the fragrance of her blood. There was much to do.

The bridge where she had been was dripping gore and blood, but the woman was not there. He could smell her even in the mess that had been her body—transient thing, flesh. He wanted what had been inside that flesh, he wanted to know what she knew, and he wanted to taste her mouth, delve inside her body and lose himself in the thing that she was… He snorted and shook his fur, and perked his ears up at the sound of feet thudding in the distance, then shouts, then the sound of curse fire.

Fiery eyes narrowed as it looked down at the flesh on the catwalk, and then down to where his own meat suit lay. It was horrific, truth be told, and could not be seen…

Leaping up through the high opening in the roof, fire sprouted up behind him, fire hot enough to melt the metal of the catwalk and the concrete of the floor. In the moonlight of a half moon, he ran across the roof of a factory, and he sniffed the air. He had been gone too long, and there was much to do.

He had ever so much to do…

Hermione recalled that Blaise had mentioned 'possession'. It was not correct. Although she felt like a passenger at first, as she ran and breathed and moved through spaces only a supernatural creature could traverse, she felt more than who and what she was. More human than human, more magic than a witch should, and it was intoxicating.

Memories and desires, impetus and understanding brought her back miles and many hours to a place that frightened and exhilarated her at the same time. Through the shadow she came to the place where she had died.

It was a different place in summer, and the trees encroached upon the crossroads. There were night creatures moving as she stepped out of the shadows and into the dulled moonlight. At her approach, everything went still. She could smell the odor of death, and slowly she lowered her nose to the ground.

Beyond the Veil is where they go…but you cannot, not until the end. You must lead them there. You must lead him there.

Him.

Her nose found the faint traces of gore and death near the crux of the crossroad, as she pawed the ground. Under the compost of leaves and dust, under the must and traces of other animals, she found him. One swipe of paw, too large to be that of any natural creature, she pushed away the dirt off a face, a spectral image of the soul whose life had ended on the spot.

She sniffed his face as his body, silvery in the dim light under the trees, floated up out of the forest soil. He had no real substance, a ghost really, summoned with a power she alone possessed. Moving away from him, she circled around his body, intact, but still and unmoving. He looked beautiful, statuesque even in the clothing he had been wearing the night he was killed. It was all silver, like moonlight, and when his eyes opened, she felt a thrill pass through her. She could not have conjured such a precise vision of him in her mind, not even from memories. He sat up slowly, his eyes milky and blind, but he looked at her, and slowly his face composed itself into one of resignation.

 _I died, didn't I?_

The words were whispery wind, gated and odd, but still _his_ voice.

She did not answer, and knew that if he could see her, it would not be Hermione Granger he saw. It would be the barghest, the hound of hell...her.

 _I'm not ready to go...I'm not…_

His silver lined face twisted and he stood slowly, his hands balling into fists at his sides. He looked around the forest, as if looking for something. His face lifted to the sky then and the tears, like starlight, streamed down his pale face.

 _Will I see her again? See all of them?_

His eyes met hers and all the fight left him, and he quickly wiped tears away.

 _Shall we go then?_

She stood taller, and lifted her nose to the air. She stood as high as his chest. When she manueved against him, his hand resting on her neck, she sighed. She could not speak, and even if she could, what would she say? The guilt she had felt seemed so distant, and the pain of loss so dulled compared to the impetus to lead him to the Veil. If anything, she wished she could explain it all to him. Ron had always acted so irritated when she would pedantically explain things to him, but she knew, deep down, he loved her for it. Ron was bright, but he had always said she was brilliant.

The Veil in Puzzlewood was ancient, older than even the trees that grew up around it, but younger than the rock cleft that formed it in a bare face of a low hill. It was like the barrow where his mortal body had been interned, but ancient, magical, and sacred. The cleft was invisible to the living, and only those with certain gifts could sense it. Had she been in usual form, she doubted she would have known it was so near the crossroads.

She had memories of the Veil in the Ministry of Magic. She had only seen it once, and even then it had only been an empty archway where invisible winds blew cold and smelling of earth. That was one of several places in Britain. Puzzlewood was another...and it...it was very different.

Ron paused at the threshold, and unseen winds rustled his fringe, and he lifted a hand to shield his eyes. His fingers delved into the thick hair on the back of her neck, and she knew he was unsure. The Veil was dark beyond, but there was a sound, a strangely soothing sound that was not quite melodic. There were voices, soft, ancient whispers. It was beckoning to him, she knew.

 _Will it be all right?_

She wanted to tell him it would be. It was where they all went, in time. Even her...when the end came.

Nudging his thigh when her lupine head, Ron pulled his hand free of her fur. He looked down into her fiery eyes one more time.

 _This is it then?_

She wanted to nod, but instead nudged him again, forward toward the Veil. Ron smiled sadly and looked ahead. Distantly he could hear their voices, those who came before...Fred...Remus...Sirius...old friends long gone.

Ron took another step forward and reached out a hand toward the Veil, and then looking back at her, smiled.

 _See you later…_

And he was gone.

She stared with hellish eyes and could not see anything in the dark beyond. She would only lead others there. In time, all that she loved and knew would go, and if it would not be her, it would be…

Him…

She sniffed toward the Veil one last time, and smelling nothing but the forest, turned and began to run along the dark paths again. She had much to do.

"Neville? Hey, Longbottom…"

The voice cut through the mist of a dreamless sleep, and he felt his consciousness begin to ascend from some deep place.

"No, no, just wait outside, you lot!" the voice barked, not toward him, but away from him.

Feeling returned to his body, and he felt warm, slightly sticky. It was an odd sensation, that and the weight of a body against his left shoulder.

"Nev, wake up, mate."

His eyes snapped open, and he winced at the bright morning light streaming into the interior space in which he lay. He recognized the ceiling of the central room of his family house, the spiderwebs and the beams. Harry Potter shifted to move into his line of sight, leaning down to snap fingers in front of his face before moving around his prone body to lean down and begin shaking the body next to him.

"You with me?" Harry grumbled as Neville looked at the naked body pressed against him.

"Y-yeah," he coughed and lifted his free hand to rub his face, feeling the beginnings of a beard on his cheeks. When he lowered his hand, it was to touch the shoulder of the woman next to him.

Hermione.

At his touch, her eyes opened.

"I've got three of my men just outside, could you two…" Harry trailed, moving to pass them their wands from where they were resting on the mantle over the hearth. Neville found this curious. He could not recall the last time he had had his wand. It felt strange in his hands, and slowly he looked at them, fingers and nails dirty, but oddly the palms of his hands clean and pink as if freshly scrubbed. There was some lingering sensation of itching in his palms but he could not figure out why.

Neville sat up slowly, and Hermione yawned as she extracted herself from his side. Harry looked away and sighed. Neville conjured a simple terry cloth robe, a nice flannel in blue and green. Hermione was watching him as he stood, and then, taking her own wand, conjured a simple white shift that covered her body and the dirt and what looked to be dried blood on her skin. Her hair was a tangle of leaves and mud. Neville knew he looked much the same.

"I suppose you both will have sufficient explanations about this…"

Neville blinked. He could hear voices outside of the house, and knew there were Aurors on the property, more than just the three outside the house. Slowly, he turned to Hermione, whose expression was confused, most likely like his own. Reaching down, Hermione's hand went to his, and together they stood in the middle of the small central room.

And it seemed as it all fell away, their eyes met, and for a moment, he could see himself through her eyes, see the fire just behind those brown eyes…

"Hermione?" Harry asked softly, and suddenly they were both very much awake.

The spell was broken, if that was what it was. Neville felt it. It was very much like shaking off a binding spell, a sudden hyper-awareness and clarity. Whatever it had been that had made him sleep, make him forget, it was gone.

"H-how long?" Hermione croaked, and slowly she pulled away from Neville, her eyes narrowing as she look at him, and then to Harry. "Harry?"

Neville sighed. The question seemed strange, but they had been laying nude in his family house, and there was apparently a gap in his recollection as to how he got there. The last thing he remembered was…

"Two days…"

...making love to Hermione Granger in a filthy room, chained, and Blaise Zabini, something about Blaise Zabini...

"...the Zabini house was razed and we are still pulling out the bodies. But we were able to catch one of the Patils in London, trying to flee to some place...she confessed to a great deal of things, including having a hand in your deaths," Harry finished, his voice rough and angry.

There was knock on the front door and Harry grumbled and swept to the door, his red Auror robes snapping at the force of his movement. Neville found it odd that Harry was wearing them, they only really wore them for ceremony since Voldemort… Neville watched as Harry stuck his head out the door and barked orders.

"...will be taking the Floo, Williamson, now get the others and get back to the office. The operation is over."

Neville frowned, and then he felt Hermione's hand on his arm and he turned slowly to look down into her eyes again. It was strange, he felt, to feel such an immediacy of attraction and curiosity.

It was if they shared a secret…

He moved to pull her closer, and she exhaled softly, moving to lift up on her toes. He hunched his shoulders, hands moving to grasp her shoulders. She was warm, she soft, and as he moved to kiss her, their hands slide down arms and chests to join. Their kiss was soft, gentle, and in it there was a sort of understanding that even if there were bits misremembered, they had this…

Harry cleared his throat, and slowly they parted, staring into each other's eyes.

"We have a lot of talk about, I think," Hermione whispered to him.

Neville nodded.

"But I think you two need to talk to us first," Harry interjected. And motioning to the grate, suppressed a grin. Hermione's expression turned dark, and Neville frowned.

They parted, and within a few moments were in the Ministry. Neville found it odd to be indoors, odd to be clothed, odd to be asked questions to which he did not know the answers. All that seemed to make sense, and keep him from saying or doing something untoward, was being near Hermione. In the light in the simulated windows of Harry Potter's Ministry office, she looked as uncomfortable as he felt.

A story formed, however, and a Dicto-Quill took their statement as they sat rather informally in an old Chesterfield couch in Harry's office. In any other time, it might appear to be a social gathering of old classmates. Harry sat in an armchair, leg resting on a knee, watching his old friends with varying expressions of confusion. The story was what they had experienced, Hermione nodding while Neville recounted the events up until they were attacked at the Longbottom house. He left out the personal details, but considering how Harry found them, it was not as if it were some big secret. All the same, it was really none of Harry Potter's business…

"I think we got too close…" Hermione said after a long silence. Neville had finished speaking and Harry was rubbing his temple where his hand had been propping up his head. At Hermione's words, both men regarded her. She had been sitting against Neville, eyes distant and fixed on the pattern of the rug on the office floor. "Whatever it was they were trying to do...we got too close."

Neville really did not understand what Hermione could mean. He had only voiced the facts. They had been attacked and retreated to the only safe place he could think of. He had done the right thing in contacting Harry when it had, and from that point on, to waking up in what must have been the Zabini house, it had been clear that he and Hermione were going to be the next victims to the cult of Liminality.

"Padma's statement provided a few answers as to what Zabini was trying to do...a cure for lycanthropy, using arcane magick and rituals?"

Neville blinked at Harry's words. Was that what it had been?

There was something else, more than that, but somehow it was just at the edge of his consciousness. It was like trying to recall a dream that was beginning to fade.

"According to her, you two were marked and sacrificed, much like Nott and the others."

Neville could not hold back the chuckle and glanced at Hermione who was staring down at her hands in her lap.

"Either she is mistaken, or whatever ritual Zabini and his followers were trying to finish was successful."

Neville inhaled and sat up straighter. "I don't…" he began, but felt Hermione shift next to him, her hand moving to touch his arm.

"Is Zabini dead?" Hermione asked softly.

Harry sighed, shifting to sit forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands folded before him. "Yes."

Hermione stood then, and Neville frowned as she began pacing, a hand pressed to her mouth, before the fireplace of the office. And when she drew her wand very suddenly, both men, both Aurors, were on their feet. Harry made a noise of protest, but already Hermione was weaving complicated spells for privacy. The Floo was disconnected, the door to the office warded, the room made impenetrable to surveillance. Neville was impressed she knew such advanced spell work taught only to Aurors, and then he remembered how it was that Hermione Granger probably learned the spells.

When she started speaking her story, Neville watched Harry turn very pale and slowly sink back down into his chair. It was a story that started years before in Puzzlewood, and as she spoke, the nearly unreachable memory was suddenly coming up into his forebrain. With it, the itching under his skin.

"...register as a magical creature now?" he managed to hear Harry say as Hermione hugged herself before the fireplace, looking wilder than before. Neville blinked and suddenly moved to her, holding her trembling body against his chest. He glanced back at Harry who was also trembling, his green eyes damp, his lips quivering.

"What are...what are you?" Harry whispered, his voice near to cracking.

Neville looked down into Hermione's eyes, and slowly she smiled.

"Cŵn Annwn, gwyllgi, barghest, there are many names…" Neville whispered, his voice barely his own.

"Myth, legend, and not at all the business of the living…" Hermione continued.

"And that is all that will ever be said of it, Harry. What we've said is true, but let's strike the last bit from the record...no one would believe it anyway."

Harry stared at them, and for a moment, Neville could see what Harry was seeing. Darkness, darkness around them both, and the red glow of hellfire behind human eyes. When Harry began nodding, licking his dry lips, and motioning to the parchment, disengaging the Dicto-quill, Neville knew that it was over. 'It' was over…

"I want to go home," Hermione said after a moment, after the parchment was redacted and all record of her explanation to their old friend was destroyed. "Would that be possible, Harry?"

Harry had begun moving about his office, making sure that the even the Dicto-quill was destroyed before rolling up the parchment of their accepted statement and sticking it in his desk below an enchanted window. At Hermione's question, Harry froze and turned slowly, his eyes unable to look at her long.

"Y-yes, Hermione, I believe we are done here."

Neville felt a small relief in Harry's words, but oddly at a loss as what he should do. Hermione disengaged herself from Neville's arms and reactivated the Floo with a slash of her wand. She looked at Neville and smiled.

"See you soon," she whispered, so that was what Neville though she said before she drew Floo powder from the jar next to the fireplace and was gone in a flash of green. He sniffed the air for a moment and sighed.

"I'll submit my own report on the case in a few days," Neville said after clearing his throat.

Harry stared at Neville and then began to nod.

Neville returned the nod and then went to the Floo, and went to the only place that he had known as home.


End file.
